MILPAS GENTRIFICATION P.6 FASHION SENSE P.18 MUSIC MAKERS P. 20
SANTA BARBARA
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FRIDAY TO FRIDAY FORTNIGHTLY
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TIM BROWN IS SMOKIN’ HOT Brit-born Tim, who lives in Santa Barbara with his wife, Diane, and their two children (Samuel, 17, and Robert, 12), owns and operates The Santa Barbara Smokehouse, where he and his crew select the wood chips and logs to smoke, fillet, clean, salt, dry, slice, and pack the high-grade salmon his brand, Cambridge House, specializes in and sends to customers throughout the United States (story begins on page 13)
DISTRICT ELECTIONS P.5 I HARRIED A COMMUNIST P.7 Eastside, Westside, all around the town; if we’re not careful, before we know it, we’ll need City Hall’s permission to change neighborhoods.
How the Gipper Vanquished Communism, Punched Out Clark Kerr, Created Your Paralyzing Tuition, and Changed Higher Education from a Right to a Country Club.
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Santa Barbara International Orchid Show
Content
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SB Centric – James Buckley pays a visit to the Santa Barbara Smokehouse, where owner Tim Brown is sssssmokin’ with salmon
Sharon’s Take – Sharon Byrne scrutinizes the six district elections in Santa Barbara and explains a pair of constraints T he Bi-weekly Capitalist – Jeffrey Harding delves into Hispanic activists and explains why district elections would be polarizing compared to at-large representation
CELEBRATE with ORCHIDS!
March 13 -15, 2015 Earl Warren Showgrounds SBOrchidShow.com
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S tate Street Scribe – Jeff Wing digs into UCSB history and that of Clark Kerr, UC Berkeley’s first chancellor and the “architect” of California’s Master Plan for Higher Education
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eer Guy – Have no fear, Zach Rosen is here with the history of bappir – so B bottoms up to the Sumerians and the SB Historical Museum’s Cellar Series
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The Fortnight – The yolk’s on Jeremy Harbin, as he takes a stand to explain the merits of the SB International Orchid Show, Plaza Playhouse Theater, and Sama Sama Kitchen
S anta Barbara View – Sharon Byrne walks the streets to survey the homeless and touches on the rental market and Social Venture Partners; Cheri Rae shows enthusiasm for baseball tradition, and reflects on Gilda Radner
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News Page – Fred Harris at The Riv adult superstore; and Crock O. Schitt knows Jack Schitt
Up Close – Jacquelyn De Longe may not be a self-professed fashionista, but she uses common sense when it comes to fashion sense around Santa Barbara
We Are
Flavor
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On Business – Alan Hurst opens the doors to Hidden City Studios, where entrepreneur Elliott Lanam is among the music makers and the dreamer of dreams
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Man About Town – Mark Léisuré reflects on the late Ben Woolf’s big heart, chronicles Geoff Green of SBCC’s Foundation, reports on teepees at SBCC, and previews Westmont’s stage productions, among other Central Coast events
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Holistic Deliberation – Allison Antoinette looks back on National Chocolate Month with an appetite and mind for being guilt-free Cinema Scope – James Luksic gets in Focus, keeps tabs on Kingsman: The Secret Service, and keeps pace with McFarland, USA
Hands Full – Mara Peters puts herself in the shoes of Ashley, a family friend and ESL kid whom she encourages to work hard and forge a path to success
SBMM Santa Barbara Maritime Museum
Saturday, March 28th | RSVP Today! Seaside Soiree: Harbor Tastings & Treasures
Join us for SBMM’s annual event! Enjoy sample tastings from the finest purveyors of wine, beer, spirits, and local gourmet cuisine. 113 Harbor Way, Ste 190, Santa Barbara, CA 93109 • sbmm.org • (805) 962-8404x115
Santa Ynez Valley Snapshot – Our SY Valley girl Eva Van Prooyen serves up the Taste of Solvang, in addition to Farmers Market Chef Walk, Bubbles & Brunch, and her biweekly Top Faves including ostrich slippers
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Behind The Vine – Hana-Lee Sedgwick pays a visit to Roark Wine Company in Buellton, where Texas transplant Ryan Roark oversees the wine production
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Driver’s Seat – Randy Lioz sits behind the wheel and navigates the latest in car technology, which could require a learning curve and following directions when driving a “rolling computer”
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I Heart SB – Elizabeth Rose was down with a frown as long as a country mile, until she did some boot-scootin’ at Creek Side Inn
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by Sharon Byrne
take
Sharon’s education in engineering and psychology gives her a distinctive mix of skills for writing about and working on quality-of-life, public safety and public policy issues. Her hyper-local SB View column can be found every other week.
District Elections Coming This Year
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t’s official, we’re moving to District Elections in the city of Santa Barbara. From the city’s public information session February 28, a lot of information came out about the mechanics of how this is all going to work. First, there will be six districts created, though only three go up for election this year: Eastside, Westside, and Mesa. The other districts would be presumably put in play in 2017. The intention of the settlement of the lawsuit Banales et al v City of Santa Barbara is to create two minority-majority Latino districts: Eastside and Westside. The settlement cost the city $600,000 in plaintiff attorney fees, and some of that is rumored to be going to the plaintiffs. Not included in the settlement is a move to even-year elections, where turnout is greater. According to city attorney Ariel Calonne, that would be done via ballot initiative.
The big question before the public now is: who draws the district lines, and where? The answer is we all can, though the timeframe is extremely compressed. How can you participate? Go to santabarbaraca.redistricting. esri.com/districting/districting.html to play with the mapping tool that lets you create your own version of the city’s district map. You have a couple of constraints: Constraint 1: District 1 (Eastside) and District 3 (Westside) must be minority-majority Latino districts. The litmus test is Citizen Voting Age Population; it must be greater than 50-percent Hispanic. That’s not registered voters or total population. It’s the number of people that self-reported as Hispanic in the 2010 census over the age of 18, who are presumably eligible to vote. You can pull a precinct in to
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a district, edit one out, etc., with the mapping tool. But if districts 1 and 3 are not more than 50-percent Hispanic in terms of eligible voting age population, then your map will not pass the test required by the settlement. Map drawers are encouraged to keep concepts like Communities of Interest (COI) at the forefront of their minds. One thing this whole situation brings to the forefront is this: what is your neighborhood? How do you define it? What is the city’s definition of your neighborhood, and does it map to your own? Neighborhoods are included in districts via the city’s General Plan classification for them. That may or may not reflect your own sense of your neighborhood. Another concern is neighborhoods in transition. What happens to those? The answer is the census count. A neighborhood’s make-up in 2010 may have shifted considerably by 2020, and so there will be a redistricting effort in 2021 to address those shifts. Whatever district maps get adopted this year will be in effect for about six years, and then will be redistricted every 10 years from now on. Constraint 2: deadline for maps submitted by public is Thursday, March
12. Why so fast? Barry Cappello, the plaintiffs’ attorney, said it’s time to stop talking, answer the call of disenfranchisement, and act now. City attorney Calonne said the city is not admitting disenfranchisement. What’s clear is that some Latinos that run can win. Some cannot. Since it never went to court, disenfranchisement among Latino voters was never proven. Given that Palmdale has spent north of $3 million fighting their district elections case, and no board or city sued so far has prevailed, the city exercised some financial prudence in settling quickly. Some of the questions around district elections will take time to bear out. For instance, does having a city council rep really guarantee more attention to your community? Given that it takes four votes to do anything on council, district reps would presumably need to acquire considerable skills in diplomacy and horse-trading. A council rep doesn’t have awesome powers to command city staff to do anything on their own. Another question: do district elections, with two minority-majority districts, which may have priorities that other district reps don’t agree with, now set up a string of 5-2 votes on city council? Time will tell.
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Bi-Weekly Capitalist by Jeff Harding
Jeff Harding is a real estate investor and a writer on economics and finance. He is the former publisher of the Daily Capitalist, a popular economics blog. He is also an adjunct professor at SBCC.
Power, Districts, and Gentrification
T
he big news in Santa Barbara is that local Hispanic activists want more power (district elections) and less gentrification (Eastside Business Improvement District or EBID). And that’s about it, at least according to news sources here. Yeah, there are murder trials, and freeway head-ons, and the usual nitpicky political stuff. News is pretty boring here, but that’s a good thing. District elections? I get it. Now that Hispanics constitute about 40 percent of the city’s population (per city-data. com), they see district elections as a path to political power. There will be six new to-be-formed districts. Two of the new districts must be a “minority majority” area (i.e., Hispanic). For example, the Westside, apparently being a majority Hispanic area, is already staked out by city council member Cathy Murillo. The other district will mostly likely be composed of the Lower Eastside, at least according to the demographic data I reviewed for this article. If you think politics is akin to sausage-making, just wait until you see the hearings on district formation. Who is in and who is out. My guess is that blood will run deep on the floor of the political abattoir.
What I dislike about this whole district thing is the polarizing effect it will have. Instead of having the “atlarge” representation we have now, each district will be competing for limited government resources. With at-large representation, there is at least some commonality among the council members who don’t necessarily have to fight for specific neighborhoods but can see the needs of the entire community. All you have to do is see how our county is run (district elections), and you will see what I mean. The other thing I dislike about this is the idea that power and progress comes from the government, and that you are disenfranchised if you don’t have your hand in the political spoils. This is the problem with America, not the solution to our problems. Our serious problems (economy, jobs, security) have been mostly created by government rather than solved by government. Polls reveal that Hispanics worry about the same things that everybody worries about: crime, education, and jobs. I’ll save immigration reform for another article (I think it’s necessary, fair, and moral). District elections won’t solve these problems. There is nothing the city can do
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about jobs, so if you think your council member will grab a job for you, they can’t. They can reduce barriers to those who wish to create jobs in Santa Barbara if you want jobs, but most of the candidates who wish to represent the Hispanic community are Progressives (surely a misnomer if there ever was one), and their policies will only limit job opportunities. Politicians can do something about education, but the necessary reforms will not be forthcoming from your Progressive council member because they will be heavily supported by the teachers union who wish to prevent the reforms that would create better educational opportunities. Charter schools and vouchers, for example, are a proven path to good education in all communities they have served, but the union is dead-set against reforms. They can do something about crime, but while there is the common idea that most crime occurs in Hispanic areas, that is just wrong, at least according to the reports of the Santa Barbara Police Department. It seems they have been doing a pretty good job in Hispanic neighborhoods. Which area of our city has the most crime? There is one area that has about 23 percent of all crime, according to police crime incident reports: the downtown corridor around State Street. From the beach up to Arrellaga, bounded by Anacapa and Chapala, is where most crime occurs. Also, if you take the area just east of downtown, from Montecito Street to Victoria, bounded by Salsipuedes and Anacapa (mixed-use area), you can add in another 14.5 percent of all city crime. Why are these areas so susceptible? Well, consider that’s where a lot of people gather and commit mayhem, plus the prevalence of drugs and alcohol, and there are a lot of businesses to rob (so say the stats). So, you have 38 percent of all city crime in these two areas. How about the Westside? Only 2.86 percent of all crime. The Lower East (excluding the area adjacent to downtown and the beach), 9.66 percent. The Milpas corridor from Canon Perdido to the Freeway: only 4.75 percent (which has gone down considerably because of better policing and an improving economy). Those of you in the Lower East (9.66 percent) have something to complain about, but are higher crime statistics the result of a lack of political power? You know the answer to that. Things won’t get any better with district elections, and they may just get worse. Which brings me to the Eastside Business Improvement District (EBID).
The group PODER (Spanish for “power”) noisily opposes EBID. So does Cathy Murillo, maybe not noisily. I reviewed articles about PODER and looked at material on their website. For the record, they are a Progressive group. I think their argument is that EBID will improve the area and thus foster gentrification that will raise rents and drive out low-income Hispanic tenants. I also looked at the website of the Milpas Community Association (MCA), which is sponsoring EBID. For the record, they are mostly business folks in the Milpas area. EBID will “assess” (tax) the 600 or so businesses in the area. A majority vote of these businesses will create the district. The plan is to use the $164,000 raised annually to clean sidewalks, remove graffiti, do landscaping, stage holiday events, and the like. They will also act to support or oppose development in the area. If the reason PODER is opposing EBID is because of gentrification, they are way off. Cleaning sidewalks and removing graffiti won’t bring gentrification. Gentrification is where “bad” areas are cleaned up, and people move in because the area is more appealing and housing costs are lower than in other areas. There are only two things that promote gentrification. One is market forces. With high housing costs here, middle-income folks are squeezed out of most housing and look for deals in areas with cheaper housing. They buy a small bungalow, fix it up, and move in. But they won’t move in if crime is high and schools are bad. EBID won’t do a thing about this. The other thing is zoning. If areas are rezoned for higher-density development, developers and investors will move in and take advantage of these cheaper properties, and develop them into more expensive properties. The city (not EBID or MCA) has already rezoned the Milpas corridor to high-density commercial and residential use. Also, the area east of Milpas over to Salinas Street (from Carpinteria Avenue to the freeway) has been rezoned for mediumhigh density residential (15-26 du.ac.). You will start to see your neighbors selling out to developers who wish to build nice condos or apartments. EBID didn’t cause this. PODER should be thanking the Milpas business folks who are trying to make things better. Politics and politicians are unable to solve the problems most of us face. All the noise you hear is mostly about power grabs by interest groups that try to get more out of government to the exclusion of others and perpetuate the power of those politicians they elect.
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STATE STREET SCRIBE by Jeff Wing
Jeff is a journalist, raconteur, autodidact, and polysyllable enthusiast. A long-time resident of SB, he takes great delight in chronicling the lesser known facets of this gaudy jewel by the sea. Jeff can be reached at jeffwingg@gmail.com
The Commie Witch Hunt That Built UCSB’s Kerr Hall and Raised Your Tuition
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n the buzzing, vibrant center of the beautiful UCSB campus sits a squat concrete box. This is Kerr Hall. Simultaneously cube-like and angular (not an easy combination to effect), the building looks like an enormous post-modern bunker, or an Iron Curtain edifice meant to make a statist comment. Which is fitting. To add to the atmosphere of gaiety, Kerr is windowless on three sides, its gray pebbled carapace textured with roof-to-ground vertical grooves, reportedly not molded in a cycle of prefabrication but deafeningly gouged out with jackhammers once the building was completed, in 1977. A demure little plaque at the bunker’s east end, gone tastefully green over the years, bears an innocuous inscription. “Clark Kerr – President of the University of California 1958-1967. For Encouraging a Better Quality of Teaching”.
Who is this Clark Kerr guy? You wouldn’t know it from that bland little encomium, but Clark Kerr was UC Berkeley’s embattled first chancellor, and not incidentally a prominent Free Speech piñata who the Commiefrightened Establishment would beat till the candy came out, to our common detriment. Clark was also Ronald Reagan’s springboard into politics in the go-go 60s. He would be invoked with contempt as a limp, liberal communist sympathizer in The Gipper’s galvanizing 1966 campaign speeches.
Bald Bespectacled Professor Kicks Open Academy Doors
Kerr was, more lastingly, the architect of what came to be known as the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the nationally and globally
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venerated public education model that layered California’s institutions of higher learning – community colleges, the California State College System (today’s CSU), and the vaunted University of California system (the UC) – into a parfait of academic upward mobility. The Master Plan’s holy mission was to codify a promise from the State of California to her citizens: any student who aspired to an empowering education would have one, and practically free of charge; a compact that wove into the state’s cultural fabric a social and class mobility that was limited only by an individual’s desire to rise through learning.
Knute Rockne Versus Pinkos
This didn’t sit well with everyone, particularly Reagan, a guy to whom (like most of the country during that period) the word “State” summoned the Red Scare, Stalin, and Siberia’s chain of Best Western gulags. In 1966, Reagan would enlist the delighted assistance of the FBI and step lithely into the governor’s mansion on the mud-smeared back of Clark Kerr, and three weeks later Reagan would loudly fire Kerr as UC president. A couple years after that, in 1969, the Governor would formally
begin California’s climb-down from investment in public higher education by placing more of the burden on the University students themselves, whose socialist ingratitude for the education they were receiving had gnawed at him since the days of Berkeley’s student protests and what he considered Kerr’s insufficiently iron-fisted response. Reagan’s convincing of the UC Regents to impose “education fees” on the UC students was comeuppance for Kerr’s Master Plan, and is considered by educational historians to be the introduction in California of a little something called tuition. Heard of it? You can blame it on the commies.
Clark Kerr in the Ascendant. Briefly.
In 1949, the United States was aflame with the Red Scare, which sounds like a rash and did indeed result in pustules and weeping sores, many of them holding public office. That year, the UC had instituted a requirement that all employees, present and future, sign an oath of allegiance foreswearing ideas and institutions seeking to overthrow the U.S. government, a thinly clad ...continued p.22
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by Zach Rosen
accumulate on the jug’s wall, clarifying the liquid.
Modern Recreation
The Origin of Beer
B
eer is old. Beer is very old. It was the standard food source for pyramid workers and its origins even predates the Egyptians. In fact, one of the first existing pieces of literature is the Sumerian poem “Hymn to Ninkasi”, which dates to 1,800 B.C. Ninkasi was the Sumerian goddess of beer and brewing. The Sumerians invented beer, known by them as kash, and this poem was basically a brewing recipe that they passed down for generations. Ninkasi, or Lady of the Inebriating Fruit, was the child of Enki, the great water-god (similar to the Greek Poseidon) and Ninhursag, the mother mountain goddess of fertility. The myth of Ninkasi’s birth is a fun tale and full of all of the soap operatic elements that come with much of the ancient mythology. Basically Enki cheats (a lot) on Ninhursag and so she makes him sick with eight cursed plants. Before he is destroyed, she heals him by giving birth to eight deities, each one curing him of a different ailment. As fitting for a goddess of beer, Ninkasi cures his mouth and “sates the heart.” The name Ninkasi might not be totally foreign to you. Ninkasi Brewing Co out of Eugene, Oregon, pays homage to the Sumerian beer goddess with a lineup of hoppy, west coast-style beers. Their flagship Total Domination IPA has a little more caramel malt character than your typical IPA with a full, hoppy nose of grass and grapefruit. For the more adventurous, there is Tricerahops Double IPA, an aggressive, boozy brew with a fruitier nose and richer malt character than their normal IPA. A particular favorite of mine is Vanilla Oatis. This oatmeal stout has notes of espresso bean and dark chocolate with vanilla beans adding an elegant undertone. The oats give the beer a fuller body and a silky mouthfeel that imparts a more decadent character to the beer. If you are not into hops, then check
Zach Rosen is a Certified Cicerone® and beer educator living in Santa Barbara. He uses his background in chemical engineering and the arts to seek out abstract expressions of beer and discover how beer pairs with life.
Anchor Brewing’s No. 6 Saaremaa Island Ale uses a yeast unique to Estonia
out their Prismatic Series. This line of beers focuses on producing classic lager styles with a West Coast embellishment. Lux is Munich Helles-style lager with a crisp, grain flavor – or try their pilsner, Pravda, for a touch more hoppiness.
Brewing with Bappir
Slightly before there was Ninkasi Brewing Co, there was the Sumerians brewers. The earliest chemical evidence for beer making was found at the Sumerian archaeological site, Godin Tepe, located in the Zagros Mountains of western Iran. This site is from the Late Uruk period which dates to about 3,500-3,100 B.C. It’s mountainous setting meant that both grain and grapes could be grown here and both wine and beer vessels have been discovered in this area. As you can imagine there is still a lot of unknowns about what the first beer was like. From the “Hymn to Ninkasi”, we know that kash was brewed using a style of twice-baked bread called bappir. These rough, dry loaves were rarely eaten. Their low moisture content meant that they could be stored for long amounts of time and were originally used as a
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Ninkasi Brewing’s Vanilla Oatis might not be an ancient ale, but it is tasty
food reserve for desperate times. Bappir was almost a cross between the enduring hard tack biscuits of nautical times and modern day rusks, another twice-baked type of bread found throughout Europe. The theory is that beer was discovered when rainwater leaked into the bappir stores, rehydrating the loaves and spontaneously fermenting the liquid from the wild yeast in the air. Some observant Sumerian noticed the offcolored liquid, tasted it, and beer was born. To make bappir, the grains would be blended with “sweet aromatics,” fruit and honey, then baked. These bappir loaves could be stored for later use. There is no direct chemical evidence to what herbs and/or spices were used as “sweet aromatics”, so these ingredients remain a mystery. That is true for several parts of this poem. Different pieces of equipment and procedures are still misunderstood. There is a line that mentions the “cooked mash on large reed mats,” but it is not known how they were heating the mash. The poem does mention that there was a “filtering vessel” and a “collector vat.” The latter was likely the fermenter. Beer stone, also known as calcium oxalate, residues are what archaeologists look for as chemical evidence of beer. At Godin Tepe, the jugs that contained calcium oxalate have cross-hatched markings on the inside. It is thought that this allowed the beer stone and other sediment to
In the Sumerian literature, there is evidence that there were several kinds of beer being made, though any specific recipes or traits remain speculative. In 1989, Fritz Maytag of Anchor Brewing Co attempted to recreate the beer described in the Hymn to Ninkasi for an event at the Penn Museum. The beer, aptly named Ninkasi, was a hit and was re-brewed on several occasions. This beer would later inspire the Zymaster Series. A line of beers that explore ancient and unique beer styles. You can currently find No. 6 Saaremaa Island Ale around town and No. 7 Potrero Hill Sour Mash IPA will soon be hitting beer shelves. The No. 6 Saaremaa Island Ale is a lighter pale ale with a special yeast that contributes a subtle spiciness and light note of berries. This yeast was harvested by Anchor’s brewmaster, Mark Carpenter, from the modern-day native brews of this Estonian island in the Baltic Sea. It is said that he didn’t have an adequate container to store the yeast in and had to use a cleaned-out shampoo bottle.
Find the Beer Cellar
If you are interested in learning more about the Sumerians and ancient beers, then join me at the next Cellar Series lecture at the Santa Barbara Historical Museum on Thursday, March 26, at 5:30 pm. I will be hosting “Lost and Found: the Fashion of Beer Over Time”. This presentation will begin in Sumeria, wherein you will learn about the role beer played in the culture while sampling kvass, a modern day low-alcohol brew that is similar to kash. The kvass will be brewed especially for the event and uses rye bread, molasses, dried fruits, and spices. From there, the conversation will drift away from the Ancient Near East and follow beer as it moved into the Mediterranean and spread throughout Europe. In “Lost and Found”, we will discuss how ingredients and technology formed different beer styles and look at the various cultural influences and historical events that shaped beer over time. You will get to taste obscure beer styles and learn the stories behind familiar ones. The beers will be paired with small bites provided by Whole Foods Market. Tickets are $25 per person and are available through the museum’s website. Whether you are a fan of history, beer, or both, “Lost and Found” will be a flavorful evening packed with intriguing stories and tasty samples.
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MARCH 7-21
by Jeremy Harbin
Tell us all about your art opening, performance, dance party, book signing, sale of something we can’t live without, or event of any other kind by emailing inthezone@santabarbarasentinel.com. If our readers can go to it, look at it, eat it, or buy it, we want to know about it and will consider it for inclusion here. Special consideration will be given to interesting, exploratory, unfamiliar, and unusual items. We give calendar preference to those who take the time to submit a picture along with their listing.
Decisions to Make
H
ere’s what happened to me a couple of days ago: I got hit with an egg while waiting for the bus. Then once I got on, I stayed on that bus about half a mile too long and had to walk back the way I came to get to where I was going. So, not only am I just some patsy, some sad-sack footnote in the book of someone else’s good time, but I’m also dumb. I can’t wait for a bus without being a target; I can’t even ride a bus successfully. I’m a one-man pity party. A loner and a loser. But that’s me. What about you, Santa Barbara? Does it disturb you to know that we’re capable of raising teens who think it’s okay to assault strangers with raw eggs? Or does it comfort you to know that, shucks, “boys will be boys” no matter where they are? Is my shame and humiliation evidence of a violent, moral-less country in decline, or is it something Norman Rockwell might find fit to paint a picture of? Think about that this bi-week, Santa Barbara. Pick a side and fight for it. Stand for something. That’s right: over the next two weeks, as you go to orchid shows and dance parties and the theater, will you throw eggs or will you get hit? Will you stand by and only watch? Will you look the other way while you sell eggs and toilet paper and spray paint to pimple-faced goons who haven’t started liking girls yet? The choice is yours, Santa Barbara. The choice is yours.
Friday
March 13, 14, and 15 You and Your Orchid ■ Speaking of the end of the world, we’re all aware of the “selfie stick” at this point, right? For those who aren’t, it’s a metal rod. You put your iPhone on one end and then hold it by the other end to get a wider angle on your self-taken photographs. You’re most likely to see one wielded by a tourist down by Stearns Wharf. Not to editorialize too much on the subject, but selfie sticks are a complete horror show that – for reasons I don’t even fully understand – makes me recoil in disgust and embarrassment and fear. Isn’t there a line from 1984 that goes something like “If you want a picture of yourself in the future, imagine a stick in a human face – forever.” I’m pretty sure there is – spooky stuff. But the stick makes sense. As a culture, we just love selfies. We can’t get enough. Sure, saying, “Excuse me, ma’am, would you might taking a picture of us in front of this dolphin statue?” would make for a better picture than huddling together and taking it yourself… but then it wouldn’t be a selfie. And so what good is it? You’d just have a boring old photograph, hardly fit for Instagram at all. If the currency is You, and pictures of You make up different denominations, then the selfie is the crisp hundred-dollar bill of this system of narcissism. Shaky metaphors aside, the selfie is part of our world now – whether we like it or not. No, really. It’s not just some passing phenomenon; it’s totally pervasive and settled into every nook and cranny of mainstream culture.
Here’s one piece of evidence: this year’s Santa Barbara International Orchid Show will feature an “Orchid Selfie Photo Booth.” I’ve claimed before that I read the press releases so you don’t have to, and I went deep with this one. From the release itself: “Orchids have become the top-selling potted flower plant in America. Flower lovers of all ages will be adopting new orchids at the show. We invite them to stage a photo shoot with their new flower companions in the orchid selfie photo booth.” You might think it’s weird that people are so into orchids that they consider them “companions,” but let’s let that one slide for now. People will be taking selfies with their flowers. Just sit with that for a minute. The Orchid Show starts on Friday, March 13, and continues through Saturday and Sunday. Each day, the doors of the Earl Warren Showgrounds (3400 Calle Real) will
be open from 9 am to 5 pm. It costs $12 to get it, unless you’re a senior ($10) or you’re under 12 (free). You can also get a three-day pass for $20 (or $17 for seniors) via Ticketmaster (no niteout.com? I like your style, Orchid Show. Very old-school). There’ll be more to do there than just take endless photographs of yourself and all your new friends (plants). There are all kinds of displays, exhibits, awards, classes, and sales. If you’re into flowers, this is your Christmas morning extended into three full days of orchid overload. Check out www.sborchidshow.com for your information. And remember: take as many selfies as possible to prove that you were there. Just Like Old Times March 13, 14, 15, 20, 21, and 22 ■ Some people think we’re looping back around to the days of radio plays. See, we’ve got these things called podcasts now. A podcast is like a radio show but instead of being broadcast over the airwaves harnessed by a hulking unit that takes up half of a living room while the whole family sits around it and listens, it’s a digital file that’s downloaded onto a cellphone and played through tiny speakers in one person’s ears. Aside from that though… it’s pretty much the same thing, right? So it’s very of-the-now that Plaza Playhouse Theater (4916 Carpinteria Avenue) has decided to present two different programs of radio shows from the 30s, 40s, and 50s. The press release calls these “your favorite old radio shows.” If that speaks to the age demographic of this event, I hope there’s a doctor in the house and an
ambulance outside, but let’s assume they meant that in a generic sort of way – as in, these were someone’s favorite radio shows at one point. Here are the big names: Agatha Christie, The Lone Ranger, Little Miss Brooks. They’ll all have their moment again over two weekends starting March 13 and ending March 22. Friday and Saturday shows start at 7:30 pm, and Sunday matinees start at 3 pm. It’ll cost you 15 bucks to get in (that’s only 89 cents in 1940; I Googled it), or $12 for students and those who are old enough to have heard these shows the first time around.
Sunday
March 15 Sama Mama ■ Sama Sama Kitchen (1208 State Street) is a good restaurant. And more than just good, it stands out in the SB food scene. If I recall correctly, they launched as the Sama Sama Test Kitchen. That’s really all you need to know about why they stand out. There’s a lot of great food in Santa Barbara, many talented chefs, and a great number of excellent restaurants that anyone could enjoy themselves in. But there’s not an overabundance of experimentation. And that’s fine; we Santa Barbarans know what we like. It’s not that we’re not adventurous eaters. It’s just that we’re already adventurous people in other ways, so when it comes down to dinnertime, we tend to want something we know for a fact is going to be good. I’m not saying the food at Sama Sama is experimental at all. But I am saying it takes up a playful space somewhere outside of the fish/chicken/ steak menus of many State Street adjacent neighbors. I don’t know why they decided to drop the “test,” but I imagine it might have something to do with being seen as a bit too far outside of that familiar territory. Sama Sama does Indonesian food as Alice Waters might like to have it. It’s a California take on non-California tastes, which is always a winning approach in my book. You can have your Nasi Goreng and know where its ingredients came from, too. Sama Sama hasn’t received as much press as some other newer spots, which I suspect might have something to
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do with writers not having an upand-coming neighborhood narrative to hang onto. Sama Sama might feel at home in some south-side areas or down by Telegraph, but instead, it’s just right there on long-established, fully developed, un-industrial State Street. Was that intentional? Are the folks behind Sama Sama making a statement about eating in Santa Barbara? It feels like they could be saying something along the lines of, “Hey, even though you expect us to be hiding away in the ‘funkier’ corners of town, here we are.” Defiant, almost. Sama Sama Kitchen subverts expectations for a State Street
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spot by producing something creative and delicious. If you haven’t tried it yet, today’s the day. Why today? Because DJ Darla Bea will be there, that’s why. She’s calling it Blue Sunday, and she’ll be spinning 80s post-punk, goth, and new wave with her pal Harvey Leche. My guess is that Darla will play you the dancier side of those genres while Harvey, aka Aaron-Michael Mendoza, will bring you some heavier vibes. Just a guess, though, and there’s only one way to find out. Blue Sunday goes down from 8 to 11 tonight (Sunday, March 15). It’s free.
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Santa Barbara’s Online Magazine, Published Twice Daily
sbview.com
Homeless Count Results Revealed by Sharon Byrne
T
he good news: 600 volunteers came out for the count, the Milpas Outreach Project got kudos for getting 9 chronically homeless individuals into stable living situations, and 74% of homeless individuals interviewed now have some form of health insurance, thanks to the Affordable Care Act. The not-so-good news: the count was relatively flat in terms of number of individuals counted, 1,455 in 2015 versus 1,466 in 2013. While some shifts in population were seen, with Santa Barbara now carrying 61.3% of the county’s homeless population this year versus 64.53% in 2013, Santa Maria’s tally picked up. They counted 324 individuals experiencing homelessness versus 243 back in 2011, the first time the count was conducted countywide. Fifteen percent of those counted were veterans, yet they also racked up the longest time living on the street at 8.3 years. Most individuals counted were found on the street (38%) or living in a car (16%). Those in transitional housing decreased from 10% to 3%, a stat that needs examination. Interestingly, when questioned about where they were before becoming homeless, the responses were: North Santa Barbara County: 23.5% South Santa Barbara County: 30% Elsewhere in the state: 22.5% Out of state: 0% No answer: 24% The out-of-state answer prompted questioning during the presentation on results. Something in the way the survey questions were constructed regarding origin data probably accounts for that result. The oldest individual interviewed was 83. Average age was 43. Average length of time being homeless was 5.5 years. There were 620 individuals identified as chronically homeless, and those are the most costly to society as they use a high level of crisis services, hospitals, and spend more time in jail. For the veterans, the news is pretty dire. They have spent the longest time on the streets, and 66.4% have some sort of mental health diagnosis, with 51.8% reporting PTSD. They were found more often in the street than in shelters. The Veteran Administration has been under quite a bit of fire in the national media for poor treatment of veterans, though our experience of them
in the Milpas Outreach Project is strong responsiveness to serving homeless veterans we’re working with. Housing placements (countywide) are as follows since May of 2013: 284 Chronically Homeless individuals 256 Children 133 Veterans Mayor Helene Schneider has signed up for two aggressive challenges: one to end veteran homelessness in the U.S. by the end of this year, and another to end chronic homelessness by the end of 2016. If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never get there, as the saying goes. Achieving these will take some major chutzpah, though.
Enter the Big Frickin’ Wall: Housing
S
anta Barbara is now in the grips of perhaps the tightest rental market in the city’s history. With less than a halfpercent vacancy in residential rental units, rents have shot up markedly. People are paying top dollar for rockbottom units. The market has priced many rentals out of reach for Section 8 and VASH (Veteran Affairs Supportive Housing). Low-income, working class, students, and even professional service sector individuals are chasing some of the same units sought for placement of homeless individuals. Clearly, Santa Barbara is not going to build our way out of this problem, so something has to shift on this landscape. Enter Social Venture Partners, which presented a solution they’re exploring here locally. They’ve examined best practices for housing placements across the nation and are modeling their project on Seattle’s program. Seattle too had a low-vacancy, high-density downtown, and a large homeless population. Their solution was to get creative with existing housing, and look at home-shares, master-leasing and different parts of the city for placements. They have a Landlord-Liaison program that works with landlords to place individuals ready to succeed in housing. Assistance with deposits, mediation, and ongoing case management reduces the financial risk to landlords significantly. Seattle housed more than 400 people in four years this way, without building anything new. Ninety-four percent of the people Seattle housed using this model are still housed a year later. The plan is to roll it
Sharon Byrne
Sharon Byrne is executive director for the Milpas Community Association, and currently serves on the Advisory Boards for the Salvation Army Hospitality House and Santa Barbara County Alcohol and Drug Problems.
sbview.com out here, in the second quarter of this year. It’s aggressive, ambitious, and then some. The flat count, especially given the Herculean efforts of Common Ground, the Restorative Police, the Milpas Outreach Project, and many others… is disappointing. Without them, perhaps the count would have been far higher. You can read the results for yourself: www.commongroundsb.org/ vulnerability-index-results.html
America’s Pastime by Cheri Rae
Take Me Out to the Ballgame
I
t’s Spring Training in Major League Baseball, and here in Santa Barbara, our PONY, Little League, and high school baseball teams are ready to hear those two simple words that mean so much: “Play ball!” On the high school baseball field, as play begins, some prayers are answered, others cruelly ignored. It’s the place where hope stays alive, year after year as the individual players change jerseys and move on, but the team continues to play the game and carry on the rituals of the wonderful sport of baseball. It’s the continuity, the tradition, the character instilled that really matters for the boys who arrive as untested freshman and who grow into disciplined young men by their senior year under the tutelage of a group of coaches who are solid as they come. Year after year, our baseball players represent the values of teamwork, hard work, and good work – on the field and in the classroom. As the old saying goes, “To whom much is given, much is expected.” This is their time, their year to put it all together for their moment to shine brightly, to play for pride, for tradition, for the love of the game. Play ball!
Restoring Radner
A
s Roseanne Rosannadanna said, “It’s always something.” There was a time when just about everyone I knew remembered every line uttered by the huge-haired and longwinded Saturday Night Live character played by Gilda Radner. Last months’s 40th anniversary show
Cheri Rae
Cheri Rae is the senior editor and columnist for sbview.com. Known for her civic activism and insightful chronicles of the local scene, Cheri has a hard-won reputation for writing about issues that other Santa Barbara-based writers are reluctant to tackle.
sbview.com honoring Saturday Night Live included a tribute to the talented Radner by actress Emma Stone – who did her best, but couldn’t come close to the original. It was a reminder of a uniquely talented entertainer who died at the age of 42. Gilda Radner has a star on Hollywood Boulevard and a tree dedicated to her on State Street. I remember being delighted and intrigued years ago, when I spotted the commemorative tree and Santa Barbara Beautiful plaque with her name on it. I always wondered about why it was there and thought maybe now it was time to find out. I took a stroll over to the spot near the Arlington Theatre, and my heart dropped to see that the plaque has been vandalized and defaced. If you didn’t already know it was originally inscribed with her name, you wouldn’t likely be able to figure it out. This seemed so wrong; just when the loopy silliness of Saturday Night Live was on full display, and presented like an early historical treasure, the Santa Barbara connection felt like a sad and disrespectful downer. I wrote to the Santa Barbara Beautiful to figure out how to make this right – for Gilda Radner and her memory. I received a nice note back from Jacqueline S. Dyson, VP-Public Relations for the organization. She advised that the plaque has been there for quite some time, and typically the original donor requests a Replacement Plaque and assumes the costs to do so. In this case, the original donor is unknown, so it’s to a third-party to initiate a Request for Plaque Replacement and payment of related costs, which are approximately $100 for the new concrete base and metal marker. It’s not often it takes just $100 to do something special in Santa Barbara. Usually, we’re talking many times that for consultants, surveys, and reports. But readers of Santa Barbara View stepped up to pay for and initiate a Replacement Request Application and make a positive response to a negative act. The new plaque will read, dedicated to Gilda by unknown donor, and replaced by the readers of Santa Barbara View.
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by James Buckley
The Santa Barbara Smokehouse
F
rom the outside, the 15,000-square-foot building on N. Nopal Street looks like it could be a church. Looking at it from the street, on the left, one can see a handsome double-width wood door surrounded by two lamp-like fixtures that indicates a front entrance. What looks like a hayloft rises above the outdoor logo of Santa Barbara Smokehouse at the center of an otherwise nearly windowless facade. It is not, you may have guessed, a church, though one could be forgiven for uttering “holy smoke” as one enters the reception area of this curious and ambitious undertaking. It is, after all, a smokehouse where salmon – and only salmon – is collected, salted, cleansed, smoked, processed, packaged, and shipped. The fresh salmon comes from all over and after being packaged, is shipped, mostly throughout the United States but indeed, all over the world. That Santa Barbara Smokehouse exists in the heart of Santa Barbara says something about Santa Barbara.
Northern California has the its Silicon Valley, and Massachusetts has Route 128 tech circle around Boston; Santa Barbara has something those two areas lack. Diversity. Santa Barbara’s 101 corridor features not only tech (Sonos, Citrix, QAD, Lynda.com), research (world-recordballoonist and UCSB physicist Julian Nott designs balloons for a possible Titan expedition in a building offcampus; half-a-dozen Nobel scientists continue their research on campus). Fashion: Deckers, which began with Teva sandals and is now sole distributor of Uggs throughout the U.S. McDonald’s Egg McMuffin was invented and introduced in Santa Barbara, along with McConnell’s Ice Cream, Motel 6, and restaurant chain Sambo’s. You should know the Sambo name wasn’t taken from Helen Bannerman’s “The Story of Little Black Sambo,” but was the short combination of the names of founders Sam Battistone and Newell Bohnett. It seems that the Santa Barbara area is a real draw, perhaps because of its 300plus days of sunshine every year, or its
Santa Barbara Smokehouse owner Tim Brown visits the 38-degree temperature-controlled shipping room in his 15,000-square-foot “factory” on N. Nopal (the prep room and packing room are sealed off to prevent contamination) where Cambridge House smoked salmon is ready to ship
year-round temperate climate (You say you want 72 degrees? We’ll give you 72 degrees. Every day, or almost every day). Maybe it’s just because the ocean is but steps away from downtown and parking is easy – at least on weekdays. Maybe the lure of the backcountry draws people, or simply the vista of 4,000-foot mountains cascading toward the sea in an east-west configuration that modifies any westerly
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winds that may mess a person’s hair or ruin a perfectly good barbecue. Whatever. All the above is a way to explain why a man would move from his boyhood home in the Lake District of northern England – where it rains more than 300-plus days a year – in order to... ...continued p.15
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Be My Valentine
■ Cordless Wands: “I can barely remember my first childhood crush, and the Valentine’s Day card my mom helped me create with crayons,” says Fred Harris, manager of The Riv, an adult superstore on upper State Street near the intersection of Hwy 154. “As the years went by,” he continues, “Valentine’s Day seemed to almost become a chore, not to mention a financial undertaking as I tried to save enough pennies for those $100-perdozen roses.” But, Valentine’s Day has returned to its rightful place in Fred’s heart, he says, “Since now, the true sentiment, and not the hype, is apparent to me.” He still treats his wife to a gift, and they still go out for a special dinner, albeit not on Valentine’s Day. “I hate the way that even fancy high-priced restaurants, treat you like cattle, herding you to a table, rushing your order, and then herding you out again, to seat the next victims... I mean patrons.” Fred is also happy now because Valentine’s Day means good things to
by Lennon James
looked back upon for the rest of your lives than that hurried meal you may or may not have finished.” He then suggests that “the We-Vibe4 is the most exciting new couples’ toy to come along in a while” and then lauds Jimmy Jane’s cordless rechargeable iconic Wand and Lelo’s Ina Wave. “These all flew out the door in an undulating wave of passion this year,” he says. And, all we can say to that is: Viva Valentine’s Day!
The True Story Of Jack Schitt adult stores such as The Riv. And not just because of the release of Fifty Shades Of Grey, although that was a bonus for his business. In fact, Valentine’s Day has become the biggest day of the year for The Riv and stores like it. “I assure you,” Fred says, “that the personal-pleasure product you buy for your loved one will produce many more intimate and loving memories to be
®
PRESENTS
■ Up a Creek: For some time many of us have wondered just who Jack Schitt really is. We find ourselves at a loss when someone says, ‘You don’t know Jack Schitt!’ Well, thanks to genealogy efforts, you can now respond in an intellectual way. Jack Schitt is the only son of Awe Schitt who was married to O. Schitt, the fertilizer magnate, and owner of Needeep N. Schitt, Inc. They had one son, Jack. In turn, Jack married Noe. The deeply religious couple produced six children: Holie Schitt, Giva Schitt, Fulla Schitt, Bull Schitt, and the twins Deep Schitt
and Dip Schitt. Against her parents’ objections, Deep Schitt married Dumb Schitt, a highschool dropout. After being married 15 years, Jack and Noe Schitt divorced. Noe Schitt later married Ted Sherlock, and because her kids were living with them, she wanted to keep her previous name. She was then known as Noe Schitt-Sherlock. Meanwhile, Dip Schitt married Loda Schitt, and they produced a son with a rather nervous disposition who was nicknamed Chicken Schitt. Two of the other six children, Fulla Schitt and Giva Schitt, were inseparable throughout childhood and subsequently married the Happens brothers in a dual ceremony. The wedding announcement in the newspaper announced the SchittHappens nuptials. The Schitt-Happens children were Dawg, Byrd, and Horse. Bull Schitt, the prodigal son, left home to tour the world and recently returned from Italy with his new Italian bride, Pisa Schitt. Now when someone says, “You don’t know Jack Schitt,” you can correct them. Sincerely, Crock O. Schitt Schitt’s Creek Michigan (Editor’s Note: My apologies to anyone who’s already read an online version)
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Voted Best Wine Shop for Six Years in a Row! santa barbara®
Winner
Tim Brown and his assistant Adriana Sanchez are readying a trip to Boston to meet and greet his current customers and possibly sign up more
smoke salmon in the sunny heart of Santa Barbara. It isn’t that simple, of course. First of all, owner Tim Brown has built – from scratch – the company’s 15,000-square-foot “factory” on North Nopal Street; this is where Cambridge Smoked Salmon is prepared, packaged, and shipped. “The products we manufacture here,” Tim says, “are sold all over the U.S.,” and elsewhere, but, he notes, “It gets very expensive to put salmon on planes.” Tim comes from a family that now owns and operates smokehouses all around the world. At first, the family business had been strictly poultry, but Tim’s eldest brother (he has two brothers, Jonathan and Simon; Tim is the youngest) loved fly-fishing and decided he wanted to learn how to preserve his catches, so Jonathan went to Scotland to learn how to smoke salmon. From that, came Grants Smokehouse, founded in the late 1980s by Tim’s father, Graham, in Carlisle, in the Lake District of England, right at the border of Scotland. Tim, who was born in Carlisle, began working at that smokehouse at the age of 15, having left school “at an early age” in order to do so. He worked his way up from filleting salmon with a knife (with buckets of hot water handy “to stop our hands from freezing”). He learned the
whole process from filleting, smoking, and processing the salmon, to drying it, slicing it, and packing it. Before getting into the smoked salmon business, his family had one of the largest poultry businesses in the U.K. “My father,” says Tim, “was the first to sell fresh, neverfrozen chickens.” The market at the time, he explains, was selling frozen chickens. “That’s why,” Tim boasts, “in California, we sell ninety percent of our product fresh, never frozen. I kind of brought that concept over and it’s worked very well.” Tim worked his way through production to sales and ended up running the entire company, employing well over 200 people, curing and smoking mostly farmed salmon from Scotland. “There wasn’t a lot of wild salmon by then,” he says.
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“There were facilities that were open on the East Coast of America,” Tim says, explaining how the business came to the U.S. His company purchased some smokehouses there. Cambridge House was established in Carpinteria, but was taken over by Tim’s company after running into financial difficulties. “It had an amazing product, different from other smoked salmon,” Tim says. ...continued p.24
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UP CLOSE
W W W. S A N TA B A R B A R A S E N T I N E L .CO M
BY JACQUELYN DE LONGE
Zareh Kantzabedian and Billy Lemire take a break in their graphic T’s and rolled denim
Our former restaurant reviewer takes a closer look at the people, places, and things that make Santa Barbara so unique. This freelance writer’s credits include Chef’s Profile for Food & Home Magazine, repeat comedic monologues for the national play, Expressing Motherhood, and many more. If she is not writing, practicing Pilates or yoga, you can find her chasing her two kids and two dogs around Santa Barbara.
State Street Style
Alexis Jaimes, Rex Sutton, and Malique James skate down State Street in easy beach style
A
s a visual culture, we inarguably assess and judge based on what we first see. Yes, it is important to get to know someone on a deeper, less-superficial level, but we perceive what we observe – and style is one of the first ways we introduce ourselves to each other. Our appearance projects to the world who we want to be and how we want to be identified, and we adorn ourselves accordingly. Growing up in a Southern California beach town two hours south of here, my only relation to style was back when Judy’s and Contempo Casuals were the “it” stores for young women before H&M and Anthropologie existed. I lived in bathing suits, cutoffs, Converse, and surf tees and wasted a few teenage years hangin’ at South Coast Plaza. Now a bit older and more aware, I still don’t think of myself as much of a fashionista or even necessarily right on point with what’s going on the runways in the big cities, but from a visual standpoint I do find fashion interesting as an art form and as a vehicle for self-expression. A semi-follower of present trends, I occasionally check in with Vogue, Harper’s Bazar, style.com and a few other fashion-based publications
Hannah Downie of K. Frank exudes boho chic with blouse and stripy sandals
Garrett and Tara Thomas topped off basic blacks with eye-catching accessories Fashion blogger Alyssa Barbin and Michael Meza know where to find the best fashion deals (at The Closet!)
Annie Janian, Catherine Sprinkle, and Natasha Beck favor classic American denim
and websites and discovered that the highlighted trends for 2015 seem to be playing out on our streets right here. Much like Santa Barbara’s unique micro-climate, our city has its own micro-sense of fashion. We get to avoid the heavy coats and snow boots, instead maintaining a year-round look without much seasonal interruption. It’s a relaxed, natural, and sunkissed style with layered clothing for those crisp foggy mornings, pleasant
afternoons, and chilly evening marine layers. Our sunny midday temps and waves of unseasonably warm winter weather are helping to peel off the standard puffer jackets of the Central Coast. And despite the few recent and rare rain showers, fashion is starting to reappear – and nowhere is it more apparent than on our local catwalk of State Street. After spending a beautiful sunny day out and about meeting the locals, I found it became easy to spot Santa Barbara’s State Street style. In classic American ease, denim dominated over all for the men and women. Skinny jeans, cut-offs, and denim shirt dresses were the basic goto items for a casual afternoon walking the strip. Black-and-white ensembles were understated yet bold against our city’s Spanish architecture and redbrick sidewalks. Breezy sundresses were also favored by the ladies who
adorned themselves with sunglasses, bold necklaces, and ankle boots. And the best accessories for our fluctuating weather has been the wide-brimmed hats to hide from the sun’s rays and lots of bare legs to keep cool. Always a year-round must-have in California, strappy flat sandals easily go from street to beach. Loose Bohemian-inspired blouses follow the boho chic craze of blending vintage styles with a modern-day twist such as skinny jeans or lace-up booties. And warm knitted ponchos with fringe and abstract prints continue the hot hippie trend. Crossbody bags hung at the hips of the women. There were the always in style classic shirt dresses that easily spruce up or down and layer well for our changing costal temperature. Add a feminine touch to tomboy basics for a casual ready-for-recreation attitude and top it all off with a sun protecting hat and you’ve got the traditional California beach style that is right on point with the fashion world’s sports wear current trends. The men kept it
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An engaging, intellectually challenging academic journey in the company of like-minded Christine Dawson with her daughter, Kendall, and friend Izzy Kamin walk around in trendy sneakers
simple, rocking graphic tees and tanks in dark and bold colors. They paired their looks with easy skater sneakers and black Ray-Ban sunglasses for a casual beach vibe. While the men may not have a lot of accessories to play with, they do love the ever-trendy hipster beard and wore it well. Living in an outdoor lifestyle city where Active wear is common place, the sporty movement was lead by Lululemon with ensembles on just about every corner and, not surprisingly, I even saw wetsuits and swimwear walking down State. (Well, the Pacific Ocean is at the end of the street!) Fashion isn’t just for the bloggers and stylists who work in the field daily, though I did come across both of those professions on my day out. It is relevant for the new moms redefining themselves, the young college students coming into their own and creating an identity, and the friends looking for something to bond over and share. If you’re interested in stepping up your own look, State Street has something for everyone with unique boutiques like K. Frank and Wendy Foster, as well as national chains like the Levi Store, Lucky Brand, and Urban Outfitters. Surf and skate shops, like Volcom and Billabong pop up in-between the traditional clothiers as do vintage and resale stores with one of a kind pieces like, The Closet, Lola, and Punch Intérieur. Clearly, our town has more to offer the fashion world than bathing suits, flip flops, and tie-dye prints. Confident easy-going beach looks can be found all over town and are something to keep an eye on. So get dressed, get out there, and show off your Santa Barbara style on the sand and on the street.
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ON BUSINESS
with Alan Hurst
Hidden Talent Lays Down its Tracks
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ccording to legend, a nineteenyear-old Elvis Presley walked into Sun Studios in 1954 to make a record for his mama for her birthday. Elvis later admitted – as much as he adored his mother – that he was actually more curious about hearing how he sounded on a record. Maybe the young crooner even fantasized about being the King of Rock n’ Roll someday. Well, whichever the myth, the rest as we say, is musical history. The genius who discovered Elvis was the young owner of Sun Records, Sam Phillips, who believed that if he could find a white singer with the popular black sound, he’d make a million bucks. The recording of Elvis’s first hit record for Sun Studios, “That’s All Right, Mama,” just celebrated its 60th anniversary (Elvis would have been 80 this year). If you’ve ever wanted to hear how you sound on a record, now is your big chance. Santa Barbara has its own fledgling studio that’s calling your name – and there’s a new Sam Phillips in town! The bright young genius is Elliott Lanam. Only 24, the producer and
all-around musician graduated from UCSB two years ago. He saved his nickels and dimes bartending and working at other recording studios here – until he had enough dough to buy the necessary equipment and open his own gig. Hidden City Studios opened in January 2014, and was originally located at Garden and Yanonali in an old undercover warehouse down by the railroad tracks. Since then, Elliott has relocated his gear to a more commercially handy spot downtown at 924 Chapala Street (behind the Canary Hotel). But the studio is still tucked away mysteriously and retains its appropriately clandestine label. Upon visiting Hidden City, the first thing you’ll notice is that the multitalented Elliott wears all the hats. He excels in every facet of the recording process: producing, writing songs, managing rehearsals; he plays several instruments, engineers all the tracks, and is an expert in the art of bringing out the best in any artist, whether catering to seasoned professionals, or amateurs still wet behind the ears. Elliott has worked
Musician, producer, and entrepreneur Elliott Lanam, 24 (photo by Gloria Mulhall)
with such stars as Katy Perry and Jeff Bridges, but he enjoys helping out anyone with a passion to make music and explore their inner talents. Zoe Guess is one example of a local newcomer who discovered Hidden City recently. With the guidance and expertise of Elliott, the Santa Barbara native has been able to see her dreams turn into reality. She describes how she heard about Elliott, and on more or less a whim decided to visit him at the studio one day. The next thing she
knew, she was recording her own album. Elliott wrote several songs for the project, played keyboards on a number of tracks, enlisted the necessary back-up studio players, and mixed the final cut to her custom-made desires. “Elliott was great!” she says. “He challenged me and encouraged me, and he made me feel right at home in the studio environment. It was a new experience for me, and professionally and artistically I felt like I was in really good hands.” Elliott also helped Zoe with the technical details of getting her songs on the Internet and showing her how to build exposure and market her album online. The result is her brand-new, 10-song LP: Mariposa Reina by Zoe Guess, now available on iTunes. Her CD-Release party and show will be held at SOhO on Wednesday, March 25, at 7:30 pm. If you have ever wanted to get into the studio and hear how you sound, there is absolutely no time like the present. Hidden City offers the lowest rates anywhere (about $50 per hour) – and you can start out with just one song or two, it’s up to you. Give Elliott a call at (650) 454-5459 or visit him online at HiddenCityStudios. com. You’ll never know what you are truly capable of – until you give it a shot. Just ask Elvis!
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with Mark Léisuré
Mark spends much of his time wandering Santa Barbara and environs, enjoying the simple things that come his way. A show here, a benefit there, he is generally out and about and typically has a good time. He says that he writes “when he feels the urge” and doesn’t want his identity known for fear of an experience that is “less than authentic.” So he remains at large, roaming the town, having fun. Be warned.
SBCC students do a happy dance around a wooden teepee
Little Woolf’s Big Heart
B
en Woolf, the diminutive Santa Barbara-raised actor comedian who made it big on the small screen via his role as Meep on American Horror Story: Freak Show, passed away at age 34 late last month after being struck in the head by a SUV’s side view mirror as he tried to cross a street in Hollywood. The actor, who stood 4-foot-4 as a result of pituitary dwarfism in childhood, who studied early childhood development at SBCC and worked as a preschool teacher first locally and then in Los Angeles between acting gigs, will be honored in a Santa Barbara memorial at Tucker Grove County Park Area 5 at 1 pm on Saturday, March 21, with members of the cast and crew expected to attend (and creator Ryan Murphy and cable network FX picking up a lot of the expenses). But Woolf ’s former colleagues at the Santa Barbara Improv Workshop, one of the local places where he got his early exposure to characterization and stage work, already held a brief memorial for him filled with a lot more laughter than tears just a few days after he succumbed to his injuries. Longtime participants in the workshop, which has been held every week for 18 years, followed instructor Alan Irwin’s lead in saying a few words about their interactions with Woolf. Most praised his determination and humanity as much as his comic chops, which apparently needed some work when he first showed up. It seems like an invasion of privacy – both Woolf ’s and the improvisors’ – to report details, but the actor was remembered fondly for his ability to truly take on one of the most cherished tenets of improv – the “Yes, and...”, which means never contradicting what a colleague suggests on stage, instead taking it deeper and further. Ben’s level of commitment was lauded, and all expressed shock that he’ll no longer be around to drop in and visit the weekly workshops on visits home. Ben’s father, Nick, who still lives in Santa Barbara and joined his son at Santa Barbara Improv Workshop on a couple of occasions warmly recalled at the mini-memorial, has set up The Ben Woolf Fund, with proceeds earmarked to purchase memorial park “BENches” and fund the actor’s favorite charities,
Teepee at SBCC
The late Ben Woolf will be honored Saturday, March 21
which include the Little People of American and the Story Teller Children’s Center.
Green with Pride: Fund’s ED Bids Farewell
A huge crowd turned up at El Paseo Restaurant to send off Geoff Green, the 17-year veteran executive director of the Fund for Santa Barbara who has moved over to SBCC’s Foundation, a couple of miles closer to the ocean. Following a funky flash mob for which Green’s former colleagues and peers donned masks of their ex-boss and danced on the tables and in the balcony to Tania Israel’s Green-centric re-write of Midnight Oil’s “Forgotten Years”, Green was both lauded for his activism and dedication to social justice and lampooned for things that won’t be missed, like his Valley Girl impression, “700-foot piles of paper” on his desk, and an ancient AOL email address. Green, of course, got the last word, sharing his surprise that he’s been able to make more than a sustainable living doing work that he loves and that has made a difference, despite never having had a plan. Then he revealed that he’s not actually completely severing ties with the Fund – he’s been tapped to serve as auctioneer for the organization’s annual Bread & Roses Fundraiser until far into the future. As the evening turned into night, Tina Schlieske and the Graceland Exiles rocked Green and the gathering with some music from the 1980s, his favorite decade, kicking things off with the apt selections “(Stop the World) I Melt with You” and “Sweet Dreams”.
A structure rose from the lawn at SBCC’s West Campus early Wednesday afternoon, and some students were seen happily dancing around it a little while later. It turns out, the wooden teepee with all sorts of doors and hinged windows (think joke wall on the old Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In) is part of a Time-Based Art class at the college perched above the Santa Barbara Harbor. “Everything came from a reclaimed barn, upcycled from Craig’s List,” explained co-builder Jacob Izzo, who goes by Fish. “It’s had a life before this. Instead of it going into trash, we made functional art out of it, art with a purpose.” The purpose, beyond the project from the class taught by Elizabeth Folk, is to be something of a haven for students or other community members, said Kiran Schwabe. “People are welcome to come by and chill between classes or whenever,” he said. “We want people use enjoy it.” The idea, said Zoe Elliott, was to “create an experience out of the mundane for city college students. It was inspired from the mindset of festivals that are about reclaiming and reusing materials.” The official grand-opening party on Thursday was slated to include a tea lounge and trading post, she said, adding that the installation is expected to remain up for a full week, meaning through at least March 11. After that, the teepee will enjoy at least one more weekend as a haven/arts center/party space at next month’s Lucidity Festival at Live Oak Campground as part of the Nomads’ Nook Kindred Quest.
In the Footlights
Even with the closing of the run of two productions by this weekend (Westmont’s The Insect Comedy or The World We Live In and UCSB’s In the Red and Brown Water, it’s still a honkin’ busy time in theater in town. Still wondering why they all always cluster up their play dates, but whatever. Lots of good stuff. Arete Productions does up dancing
and singing with the Tony-nominated Broadway show Swing! at The New Vic, home to Ensemble Theater Company (which is obviously between shows) through March 15. Moss Hart’s hilariously madcap Light Up the Sky continues through March 21 at SBCC’s Garvin. Ventura’s Rubicon Theatre gets smart with Jane Wagner’s one-woman tour-de-force The Search for Intelligent Life in the Universe March 11-29, and the Plaza in Carpinteria presents Old Time Radio Shows March 13-22.
Lounging with Léisuré
Looking for merry melodies or other non-classical musical mirth with Mark? Here’s where you might find me this fortnight. The 25th annual Ojai Mardi Gras not only brings an all-star funk-rock band to the Ojai Arts Center for the main celebration on Saturday night, March 7, but also the new Fais-DoDo zydeco dance party for families on Sunday afternoon. Lots of costumes, dancing, merry-making and more at both events. Saturday is also when Santa Barbara/Ventura-bred Big Bad Voodoo Daddy – who once played the Super Bowl back in the height of the swing revival – play a benefit concert at La Cumbre Junior High in a benefit for the school’s performing arts. The show also features a tribute to big band jazz wizard Ike Jenkins, who will conduct SBCC’s Monday Madness Jazz Band. More music on March 7: singer-songwriter Robert DeLong at SOhO, and four of ...continued p.26
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...continued from p.7
reference to sneaky Communist creeps. Clark Kerr, since 1945 an associate professor of Industrial Relations at UC Berkeley, grudgingly signed the oath but would take it no further, and continually pushed back against the singling out of colleagues and staff on campus. Kerr’s pugnacity earned him the nervous respect of his colleagues in the academy, and it was Kerr the UC Regents chose to appoint as UC Berkeley’s first chancellor in 1952. During his time as Berkeley’s head honcho, Kerr proved a rock star steward of “Cal”, such that by 1957 UC Berkeley was ranked third in the nation behind Harvard and Yale. That year, an impressed Board of Regents chose Clark Kerr to be president of the entire UC system. Just ahead lay UC Berkeley’s explosive Free Speech Movement, Ronald Reagan (and his girlfriend, the FBI), and the meat grinder that would pulverize Kerr and make pâté of his Master Plan.
card tables and benches and booths, they disseminated info on campus and collected donations for civil rights causes. UC Berkeley rules at the time prohibited any campus political activity outside the student Democratic and Republican clubs there, and the dean asked the students to please strike their tables and stand down. The bloodied Freedom Summer students would have none of it. There commenced over the coming weeks a swarming wave of sit-ins and angry marches. Kerr was caught squarely in the middle (to the delight of many), pissing off the
Clark Kerr was UC Berkeley’s embattled first chancellor, and not incidentally a prominent Free Speech piñata who the Commie-frightened Establishment would
Last Train to Clarksville Derails
In late 1964, a bunch of Berkeley student activists set up some tables and information booths on the Berkeley campus. Most of these kids had just returned from Mississippi, where’d they’d spent an adventurous summer registering as many African-American voters as possible in a well-orchestrated effort that came to be called The Freedom Summer, or in the movies, Mississippi Burning. The thousand-strong army of volunteers that poured into Mississippi that summer had braved beatings and harassment and arrest. Several of them had been murdered. Now the returned Berkeley student contingent – lives changed and eyes opened – wanted to talk about it. From their rickety
and whose purity they felt exalted to be beaten up protecting, this tattered cousin of the Magna Carta. The bland wallpaper of ubiquitous freedom doesn’t become dear till it’s being torn down by often well-meaning morons. Watching the goings-on at Berkeley were two birds of a feather; future CA governor Ronald Reagan and his bulldog on a long leash, J. Edgar Hoover, the dyspeptic and perennial pugilist-king of the FBI. Hundreds of thousands of pages pried from classified FBI files by the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) show that Reagan had been going to second base with the FBI
beat till the candy came out...
Berkeley students for not acquiescing immediately and wholly to their demands, and enraging Edward Pauley, head of the UC Regents, for refusing to expel and otherwise punish the student rebels. Bewildered and poorly directed peace officers helplessly followed the “frightened mistakes” template, arresting and nervously clubbing kids who were, after all, only agitating for a Constitution they’d been bored by as jug-eared fifth graders just a few years before, but which had now become a precious thing which the Civil Rights struggle had burnished to a fine luster,
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since his film acting days in the 1940s, routinely flipping Hoover and the boys the names of supposed Communist subversives in Hollywood, Ronny in one recorded instance dutifully reporting on an actress who’d had the temerity at a cocktail party to complain about the Hollywood witch hunts. The relationship with Hoover would prove fruitful.
The G-Man and The Gipper
In 1966, Reagan ran for governor of the Golden State, and wasted no time colluding with the FBI to smear both the Berkeley student leaders and UC president Clark Kerr, with whom both Ronny and Edgar were furious for not cracking down on the seditious, unshowered hippies. The Berkeley students would soon enough fold an anti-Vietnam War theme into their riotous campus protests and enrage Reagan and Hoover even more. FOIA documents describe in detail the nighttime break-ins and personnel
file fingering of the FBI in Berkeley neighborhoods during this period, much of which largesse showed up as fodder for Reagan’s gubernatorial campaign. In his public rhetoric, Reagan vowed to send “the welfare bums back to work,” and “to clean up the mess at Berkeley.” The student unrest at Berkeley, and the public disaffection he managed to whip into a politically helpful shit storm, got Reagan elected governor in a landslide. Once in office he went unabashedly after Berkeley, slashing the school’s budget, and, when they complained, recommending Berkeley raise money by selling their library’s rare book collections. Ray Colvig, the Chief Public Information officer for UC Berkeley during the period of Reagan’s rages, has said, “He thought if you wanted a world-class university, let the students pay for it. The idea of selling rare books went along with that.” Three weeks after his election, in the new governor’s first meeting with the UC Regents, he fired Clark Kerr. Today, there are four Kerr Halls in the University of California system; one at UC Davis, one at UC Santa Cruz, this grooved bunker at UC Santa Barbara, and most tellingly, one at UC Berkeley. Why? Providing the disenfranchised the means, not the capital, mind you, but the means, to move freely about the class system is not everyone’s cup of tea, mission statements and impassioned dais-thumping to the contrary. The metastatic growth of tuition as the defining feature of higher ed is the proof in that pudding. But it was Clark Kerr’s cup of tea. What Kerr had attempted to make an Individual Right is now an increasingly exclusive clubhouse. And Kerr? He seemed to accept his fate with good humor. When Reagan fired him, Kerr did indeed refer to himself as fired: “I leave his institution as I found it; fired with enthusiasm.” Kerr laid the foundations for a common beneficence through education and got bitch-slapped for it. And in that light, the gray concrete box that is Kerr Hall doesn’t look half-bad after all. It may even be the sweetest spot on campus. If you think of it, stop by and leave Clark a flower.
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HOLISTIC
DELIBERAT ON by Allison Antoinette
Owner of The Juice Club – a local, organic juice delivery service – lifestyle coach, and yoga instructor. Allison’s diverse nutritional wisdom is rooted in Eastern traditions, with years of mindful eating and an inquisitive mind always on the lookout for today’s latest research on health.
Chocolate: Glutinous or Guilt-Free?
D
id you know that every day and month is a national food or drink holiday? It’s true! There’s National Bloody Mary Day, National Cheese Lover’s Day, and even National Blueberry Pancake Day – just to name a few. To no one’s surprise, February was National Chocolate Month, wherein consumption surrounding Valentine’s Day alone was expected to top 60 million pounds. Whether you prefer milk chocolate, dark chocolate, caramel-filled chocolate, or one of the countless other chocolate candy options, this longtime lustful substance has captured the hearts of millions, from ancient Aztec emperors to little girls anxiously awaiting the Easter Bunny. How do we find the balance between a glutinous habit that triggers weight gain and the guilt-free path of moderation? Dating back to 1900 B.C., the ancient Mayans referred to chocolate as the “food of the gods.” It was considered an invigorating medicinal drink with rare aphrodisiacal powers and became highly touted for its curative properties. Imagine going to your doctor and leaving with a prescription for lots of chocolate! Montezuma, an Aztec Emperor, was reported drinking more than 50 goblets of hot chocolate daily as a display of power and opulence. Back then, rather than eating chocolate in solid form, the nibs from the cacao plant were ground into a paste and mixed with water to make a chocolate drink known as “xocolātl.” Today, chocolate is lauded for high antioxidant content with benefits ranging from lower cholesterol levels, reduced risk of cognitive decline, and improved cardiovascular health. Not all chocolate is created equal, however. A mere two ounces of milk chocolate could easily add 250 calories, 20 grams of sugar, and 10 grams of saturated fat to your meal comparative to its raw, unprocessed form containing zero sugar and a fraction of the calories. While it helps to improve flavor, once you add the refined sugar, milk fats, hydrogenated oils, and other additives to raw cacao, you are now at risk for a whole host of health implications.
In such a form, chocolate becomes like any other candy, contributing to lower bone density, increased risk for heart disease and accelerated tooth decay to name a few. Its also an acidic food and can further upset digestive
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we are in love or after physical exercise). No wonder the ancient elites were known to consume high quantities of this midnight elixir before their romantic rendezvous. At the end of the day, your doctor will probably never write you a prescription for truffles and bonbons, but chocolate consumed in moderation can be good for your health. Plain dark chocolate with a high cocoa concentration is your best option, and “raw chocolate” bars are abundant these days. Consider grating dark chocolate into a cup of proteinrich, Greek-style plain yogurt, or stir a few tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa powder into warm almond milk
Consuming raw or processed dark cacao leaves us feeling slightly wonderful, high, and euphoric
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“Are you hearing well Enough?”
March is National Better Hearing Month
Hearing Services of Santa Barbara
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5333 Hollister Ave, Ste 207 disorders. Added sugar and dairy aside, cacao also contains caffeine (10 grams per cup comparative to 100 mg per cup in coffee) and may aggravate existing sleep imbalances or anxiety disorder. Something to keep in mind while diving into your Valentine’s candy. While Americans prefer popular chocolate brands easily found at the grocery check-out line, studies revealing health benefits are often testing the raw, unprocessed cacao. You can reap some health benefits from a dark chocolate bar, but experts consistently agree the high heat processing – required to create the roasted cocoa used for most chocolate products – destroys the majority of cocoa’s nutrients. For instance, raw cacao is a reliable source of chromium, which helps to balance blood sugar, and extremely rich in vitamin C, but once heated and processed all traces of Vitamin C are lost. Unfortunately, we find this to be the case with most processed food. Is all hope then lost? Recent research showed that participants who drank two cups of rich cocoa daily for 30 days showed an 8.3 percent increase in blood flow to the brain, and they improved their scores on memory and thinking tests. Score! More interesting than that, consuming raw or processed dark cacao leaves us feeling slightly wonderful, high, and euphoric. It’s virtually the only food in the world that helps our brain produce more “feel-good hormones.” It contains PEA (increases dopamine production), tryptophan (increases serotonin production), and anandamide (known as the “bliss chemical” – it’s usually released when
with a hint of honey. Although such small quantities may not do wonders for your health, they will please your taste buds without adding too many inches to your waist. They will also satisfy the need for a little nudge, guilt-free.
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Ann Burre,
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Their highest-end products smoked in the brick oven that harkens to centuries-old Scottish smoking methods Santa Barbara Smokehouse’s 15,000 square-foot building on N. Nopal
“It turned out that what made the difference was that it was smoked by real fire, by burning logs.” Apparently, ninety-nine percent of all the smoked salmon in the world is smoked with wood chips, without a flame. It’s put on a hot plate and the hot plate creates the smoke, so it’s not a burning fire. “With a burning fire,” Tim explains, “you get so much more depth and flavors. It’s very different. It takes a different kind of oven. That’s what gives Cambridge House its distinctive flavor, especially our Royal, which is smoked with applewood logs.” Cambridge House features not only its Royal, but also its mild smoked salmon (“reminiscent of how salmon is smoked in London, in which you taste more the salmon than the smoke”). There is also a Scottish Highland cure called Balmoral that’s smoked with whiskey casks. “It’s very traditional,” Tim says. “It tastes just like it tastes if you went to the highlands in Scotland.” The top of the line product is Cambridge House Private Preserve, which is smoked by actually hanging the fish in a brick oven, “but,” Tim says apologetically, “we don’t push it too EARTHQUAKE RETROFITTING 50 + YEARS EXPERIENCE - LOCAL 35+ YEARS
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much because we couldn’t make enough to satisfy demand.” Tim took over Cambridge House in the early 2000s, then the family split up the businesses and he now owns 100 percent of Santa Barbara Smokehouse. “My general manager is Scottish,” he boasts, “and he tells me that what we make is ‘better than anything he’s tried in Scotland’.”
It’s All in the Woods
Different mixes produce different tastes: applewood is soft and sweet; beachwood can be bitter. Cambridge House blends its own combinations of wood. They get oak and applewood logs from Santa Ynez Valley, “All fallen, not cut,” Tim stresses. He brings in chips from Europe. “I’ve tested and continue to test a lot of woods,” he explains. “You’ve got to stay ahead of the game, trying to find that little extra inch that makes it better.” His team does extensive and continuous testing of woods, percentages of woods, various mixes and different salts. They also conduct blind tastings. “A lot of smokers use oak dust,” Tim notes, “and put them on hot plates [to create smoke], but that’s not what we do. When we started, we used logs and big pieces of wood.” The company’s biggest chips are from broken whiskey casks, and then they go to the full logs
of applewood. Did he have any problem building and opening a smokehouse in a city like Santa Barbara, we wondered? “Santa Barbara is probably the worst place in the world in which to have a smokehouse,” he laughs. “When we first proposed our plant, I think they were thinking we’d just have this metal shack with smoke coming out everywhere,” he says, still chuckling. “But,” he says, he has “no issues” with the environmental watchdogs, explaining that “When we built the plant, we put in afterburners.” He says
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they also recently spent $300,000 to upgrade the facility, again. Tim notes that Santa Barbara turns out to have almost the perfect climate for smoking. “It isn’t hot,” he points out. “In the [Santa Ynez] Valley there are hundred-degree days. The climate is perfect here for smoking fish: not too warm, not too humid.” He says wild river-caught Scottish salmon is the best there is; close behind would be Copper River King salmon. Fifty percent of the salmon he smokes come from fish farms. “Farming is critical,” he says, “because if only wild salmon was smoked, there wouldn’t be any left in the world.” As for branching out, Tim says he doesn’t want to do any other fish. “The only thing we produce is salmon,” he says, adding, “and I’m proud of that.” Cambridge House smoked salmon is available at Lazy Acres, Whole Foods, at Montecito Village Grocery (soon), and is distributed locally by Jordano’s and Santa Monica Seafood. You can also order direct online at: sbsmokehouse. com.
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CINEMA SCOPE by James Luksic A longtime writer, editor and film critic, James has
worked nationwide for several websites and publications – including the Dayton Daily News, Key West Citizen, Topeka Capital-Journal and Santa Ynez Valley Journal. California is his eighth state. When he isn’t watching movies or sports around the Central Coast, you can find James writing and reading while he enjoys coffee and bacon, or Coke and pizza.
Backward and Forward
T
he Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel picks up where the underrated predecessor left off. As I hadn’t checked into the sequel as of press deadline, enter at your own risk. It includes much of the same cast – except for Richard Gere ostensibly replacing Tom Wilkinson (whose character died). Chappie, the latest mainstream entry into the sci-fi cannon, follows the mechanical path of a robot en route to becoming humanized. The first trailer, witnessed in January, struck me as a cheesy flick for young teens, but a subsequent promo reflected a more volatile tone – hence its R rating. Its cast includes marquee names such as Hugh Jackman and Sigourney Weaver, but also Dev Patel (coincidentally Exotic Marigold Hotel’s most annoying occupant). Neill Blomkamp directs this sinister take on a fish-out-of-water story, and the hope in this corner is that he keeps his whirlwind District 9 documentary affectations stashed away in a basement. At any rate, my mind is still focused on the mid-March release of The Gunman and, later this spring, Child 44. Until then, we have two serviceable alternatives and an also-ran:
Royal Treatment
T
he British spy comedy Kingsman: The Secret Service, a slice of escapism culled from a comic book that I hadn’t heard of, stars Colin Firth as a secret agent whose organization recruits a young man off the street for training – just in time to confront an eccentric tech whiz (Samuel L. Jackson with a lisp). A curious subplot involves the kidnapping of a professor (an unrecognizable Mark Hamill, who has traded in his light saber for a wheelchair); also on hand are grandfatherly ringleader Michael Caine, whose showcase moment encompassing a gun and puppy has a brilliant payoff, and Mark Strong (sturdy as he was in The Imitation Game). Director Matthew Vaughn (X-Men: First Class and Kick-Ass – you get the idea) has crafted an enjoyable journey that’s a bit uneven, with fight sequences that become extended and thus repetitious (evidently it has become Hollywood decree that every movie must run longer than two hours). Its brief closing segment leaves little to the imagination and should’ve ended before the images of a bare buttocks and an agent monitoring her via surveillance screens. Even so, there remains a good deal of fun to be had, thanks to the fanciful production, set pieces, and a cast as skilled as it is diversified. Jackson’s speech impediment is the best element of all, along with sidekick Sofia Boutella’s aluminum pogo-stick appendages – both of which are a constant source of amusement.
Running For Their Lives
I
n McFarland, USA, Kevin Costner – who stars in the concurrent and equally satisfying Black or White – mines Disney gold (even when tarnished by clichés) with this true tale based on a rag-tag improbable boys’ cross country team in the titular town.
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The prologue, wherein our hero is seen as a football coach who crosses the line while disciplining a player is full of hot air, but the action ascends from there. The mentor transports his wife (Maria Bello) and daughters to McFarland, a blue-collar town teeming with Hispanic heritage. Although the man swiftly fails as an assistant on the gridiron, he soon builds a cross-country squad from scratch. The factual details, well-chronicled by now throughout film reviews, newscasts, and social media are presented on the big screen in a clear, rudimentary context. In turn, it’s all fairly predictable, touching, formulaic, and heartfelt – Disney by the numbers.
No Con Do
F
ocus is focused on Will Smith, once again in a Hitch-like omniscient role, as a con artist named Nicky who agrees to train an apprentice (Margot Robbie from The Wolf of Wall Street), showing her tricks of the stealing trade. Working in unison with several cohorts, these menaces to society use sleight-of-hand, and the femme fatale’s sex appeal, to pinch jewelry, wallets, purses – virtually anything valuable on one’s person. Our co-leads will flirt and succumb to passion: the couple that scams together, sleeps together. The cocky hero takes an excursion to Buenos Aires, where he joins forces with a racing mogul who happens to have Nicky’s ex-seductress by his side – in addition to a no-nonsense security chief (Gerald McRaney). The writer-director duo of Glenn Ficarra and John Requa seem to have molded a sleek thriller with traces of love and romance, while adhering to double-crossing antics and contrivance. The residue from the filmmakers I Love You Phillip Morris has trickled down, reducing them to little more than Hollywood yes men. The instructional “pickpocketing” montage appears so exaggerated and protracted, I kept waiting for Inspector Clouseau or Buster Keaton to surface during it. In other words: Focus’s focus on being slick, edgy, and infinitely deceptive isn’t always worth the effort.
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‘em (Tom Prasada-Rao, John Bunzli, Sierra Reeves, and Susan Marie Reeves) and the Guitar Bar.
Mama’s Got a Squeeze Box, Daddy too
The Accordionaires Orchestra – the largest accordion orchestras of its kind on the West Coast, consisting of all accordions save for a couple of brass and percussion – play a Sunday afternoon (March 8) gig at Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church’s Fellowship Hall. Check out the YouTube videos: these guys and both rock and play classical music. Mr. Léisuré might actually stay home on Monday night, but the best bet for Tuesday is a CD release show from Montecito-raised, Berkelee College of Music-trained jazz-pop guitarist-singer-songwriter Christina Apostolopolous with the Bay Area folk-duo Easy Leaves also on the bill at SOhO. That’s also where the great (if not quite as great as he used to be) Martin Sexton holds sway (sometimes literally – he rocks as he plays) performs on Wednesday, March 11. Another choice in the singersongwriter department for the same night would be Dave Stamey, up at the Tales From the Tavern series at the Maverick Saloon in Santa Ynez.
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Lend Him an Ear
We’ve only got two Beatles still standing, and here’s a scoop for you – Paul McCartney isn’t going to be playing in Santa Barbara County any time soon. But Ringo not only appeared at the Santa Barbara Bowl last summer, he’s already on his way back for a gig at the Chumash Casino on Thursday, March 12. As before, will be performing with a little help from his friends, the group known as the All-Starr Band featuring Toto’s Steve Lukather, Richard Page, Santana’s Gregg Rolie, popmesiter Todd Rundgren, Warren Ham, and Gregg Bissonette. The good news? Seating capacity at the already intimate theater has been drastically slashed due to some construction needs, so now there are barely more than 600 seats, about 1/7 of the Bowl’s size. The bad news? The show is long sold-out. But it’s a Beatle! Pony up for the scalpers, whatever they want. (The latest line-up for the Chumash includes Sawyer Brown on Thursday, March 26, two shows with comedienne Kathy Griffin on April 2, Sheila E on April 16, funny man Sinbad on April 23, the all – male revue Thunder From Down Under on April 30, Michael McDonald May 8, REO Speedwagon May 14, and a double dose of tribute bands with Queen
Nation (Queen) and Space Oddity (David Bowie) on May 28.) The second Friday the 13th of 2015 is already upon us, but luck should be on our side as discerning cognoscenti can catch both a rare local appearance by South African legend Hugh Masakela with Vusi Mahlasela out at UCSB followed by rock band Dengue Fever at SOhO. Tuesday also brings a double dose with gigs right across the street from each other: pop star Jason Mraz at the Arlington and Santa Barbara’s own cultural mish-mash legend Spencer Barnitz and his Worried Lads for his annual St. Paddy’s Day show. Blues guitarist-harpist Kenny Neal is the main attraction when the Santa Barbara Blues Society celebrates its 38th birthday as the oldest such organization in the U.S. The swamp blues specialist is flying in direct from Louisiana for the show, which also features the local Schnackenberg-Estrada duo as opening act. Not a bad idea to head over to SOhO afterward for more New Orleans-flavored partying with the umpteenth appearance from 19-piece band Vaud & the Villains.
Classical Corner
We’re short on space and long on stringy concerts for this fortnight, so
you’re getting barely more than a list, starting with the Santa Barbara Museum of Art presenting two different string quartets within six days: the Catalyst Quartet on March 12 followed by Cuarteto Latinoamericano on March 18. The Santa Barbara Symphony’s pair of concerts on March 14-15, a “Night Out” ode to Spanish composers, feature a pair of guests: violinist Elissa Lee Koljonen soloing on Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole, and flamenco dancer Laura Dubroca performing during Massenet’s Ballet Music from El Cid. De Falla’s Interlude and Dance from La Vida Breve and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio Espagnol are also on the program. Westmont College’s Spring Sing kicks off the season at the Santa Barbara Bowl – one of the rare times outside of Fiesta that the venue actually fulfills its original purpose as a community gathering space. Pianist Alessio Bax is the soloist when the Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra celebrates music from the British Isles on St. Patrick’s Day at the Lobero, and Camerata Pacifica welcomes guest cellist Ole Akahoshi in a program veering from Beethoven and Debussy to Foote, Field and Schoenberg on Friday, March 20, at Hahn Hall.
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You Have Your Hands Full by Mara Peters Former editor for the fashion/lifestyle section of the New York
Post, Mara moved to London and worked as a contributing editor for the Daily Mail’s You Magazine, freelancing for Look Magazine, NY Post and the Style Magazine for The Sunday Times. To remain sane during diaper years she writes a mommy blog, You Have Your Hands Full – www.handsfullsb.com.
Stepping into Someone Else’s Shoes
Santa Barbara Seafood Pasta
A tale of two girls: Olivia and Ashley as kindergarteners
“Y
ou matter,” I told her across the table. She locked eyes with me. Like she always had. You see, I met her in kindergarten. She grabbed my hand, her eyes searching for mine. Once she caught my gaze, I was bewitched. “I’m Ashley,” she had said to me way back then. And I loved her. Right then and there. I have watched her grow over the last seven years from a tiny little girl to a beautiful pre-teen. Getting a view of the world through the life of a lowincome Latina. As my daughter, Olivia, started to advance in accelerated classes in third grade, Ashley, smart as a whip, was placed behind. The disadvantage of an ESL (English as a Second Language) kid clearly at play. Yet, every week she navigated the bus system with her mom and brother to the Kumon center. Quietly protesting. Working. “You are going to go to that middle school, and many of the white kids are in the advanced classes and most of the Latino kids are not,” I told her. “And you know what you are going to do?” “What?” she asked, eyes bulging. “You are going to say, ‘Screw You.’ You are going to succeed in spite of it all,” I told her, “because you can.” “This is so helpful, Mara,” she said, taking a bite of her chocolate tart. Her eyes sparkling as bright as those days in kindergarten. And there we sat, in our bubble of connection, hope.
I can’t say I would have even been aware of Ashley and what it takes to advance out of poverty if it wasn’t for my mom. For the last 25 years, Linda Mornell has placed low-income high school kids all over the country in summer programs. Interrupting negative patterns, instilling confidence, and ultimately teaching them to reach their potential. Her new book about her experience with adolescents and building Summer Search, Forever Changed, is full of stories of kids like Ashley. Each one, prevailing in their own way, pulling themselves out of the deep hole that they were born into with the help of mentorship, serious introspection, and a lot of characteraltering life experiences. Changing their course ultimately changed my mom’s as well. And mine, to a much smaller degree. I saw Ashley. That is the bonus. Of looking outside your own world and seeing another’s. Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. With confidence, I explained to Ashley, the circumstances would flip if she can manage to stay above water. Ignore the forces against her, work hard, and embrace the possibility. All those coveting spots in college will be looking for her, not Olivia. Finally, a first-generation Latina whose mom cleans houses and whose dad works in landscaping has the advantage. And over dessert, we plotted. In six more years, her time will come.
Peters’ Pick I am not just telling you to buy this book because my mom, Linda Mornell, wrote it. Buy it to understand adolescents, low-income issues, and a vision that has helped transform thousands of kids across this country. Forever Changed documents the importance of summer experiences. It includes compelling stories of Summer Search students who each faced specific challenges, such as learning disabilities and behavioral problems. In the book, Mornell persuasively argues how summer experiential education programs can aid in the growing need for adolescents to find their own voice and embark on a path of success.
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SYVSNAPSHOT
by Eva Van Prooyen Keeping a finger on the pulse of the Santa Ynez Val-
ley: what to eat, where to go, who to meet, and what to drink. Pretty much everything and anything situated between the Santa Ynez and San Rafael Mountains that could tickle one’s interest.
23rd Annual “Taste of Solvang”
F
oodies, culture cravers, festival goers, wine geeks, and gourmands can calibrate their palates with sweet and savory flavors at the 23rd Annual “Taste of Solvang” slated for March 18-22. It’s essentially a multi-day party and culinary cannonball into the 150 stores, 30 restaurants, five bakeries, fudge house, wine tasting rooms, taprooms, candy counters, ice cream stores, and (on the weekends) – six museums that make up the small Danish village-styled town of Solvang. Presented by the Solvang Conference & Visitors Bureau and Visit SYV, the events begins with the Wednesday Solvang Farmers Market Chef and co-owner of Cecco Ristorante, David featuring chef guided walks, followed by events Cecchini, invites food lovers to shop at the Solon Friday, Saturday, and Sunday including a vang Farmers Market with him and circle around dessert and wine roundup, a winemaker dinner, the pizza oven for a demo, food, and vino a Grand Tasting tour, a Wine and Beer Walk, and a Bubbles & Brunch affair. Chef and co-owner of Cecco Ristorante, David Cecchini, says this is the third year he has hosted a chef guided tour through the farmers market. “We meet in front of the restaurant. I give a little talk about who I am, what I do, and then I invite people inside to get a little happy with some wine,” says the chef, noting some of the wine served will be his own label, Cecchini-Sangiovese and Pinot Blanc varietals he recently produced in collaboration with winemaker Steve Clifton, with fruit sourced from Palmina. “Then we walk through the market and pick out fresh ingredients together, then we come back and I do a little pizza-cooking demo sitting around the pizza counter in front of the Italian wood-burning brick oven,” says David, adding, “and I feed them pizza and wine.” Chef Budi Kazali of The Ballard Inn & Restaurant and chef James Owens of The Bistro at The Hadsten House will also host guided market tours. Let it be known, what is probably the event’s most overlooked secret, is these guided chef tours and tastings are free. Space will obviously be limited and reservations are required. Tasters will find everything from farm-to-table and rustic Italian cuisine, to New American and modern Danish fare, to a bounty of confections rivaling Willy Wonka, and award-winning beers and wines. Here is the rundown of the entire event’s schedule, what you need to know, and where to go to make your way through this whimsical village food-and-beverage maze: Wednesday, March 18 – 2:30 pm Farmers Market Chef Walk – No Charge. (First Street between Mission & Copenhagen Drive) Do a market lap to find farm-to-you fresh fruit, veggies, flowers, meats, cheeses, breads, and savory indulgences from around the Central Coast with Solvang chefs. (Chef Budi Kazali will bring the market haul and his followers back to The Ballard in for a gourmet, seated dinner.) Friday, March 20 – 7 to 9 pm Sips & Sweets – $30 per person. (Solvang Veterans Memorial Building, 1765 Mission Drive) Santa Barbara Country wineries pour wine alongside professional and amateur pastry chefs and baker’s delights for what is sure to be an overflowing and decadent dessert reception and wine-tasting event. Dance off your sugar high to the live indie music from the Sean Wiggins Band and vote to award a chef with the “Best Dessert” accolade. Saturday, March 21 – 11 am to 4 pm Grand Tasting – $35 per person. (All throughout Solvang) Over the 20-plus years of Taste of Solvang, this “main course” event has affectionately become known as a “walking smorgasbord” as it flaunts more than 30 tasting stops. Don’t worry, you’ll be armed with a detailed map and menu so you can snack, sip, shop, and wander through Solvang’s boutiques, tasting rooms, and merchants, with agility. As an added bonus, the Hans Christian Andersen Museum, the Wildling Museum,
and the Elverhoj Museum of History & Art will offer free admission for Grand Tasting ticket holders. Wine & Beer Walk – $40 per person. This two-day stroll through Solvang boasts 18 participating wine-tasting rooms, wine bars, and taprooms. This is a sure way to unearth new favorites of local wine and craft beer while working up an appetite to discover more of what Taste of Solvang wants to put on your plate. Includes a souvenir wine glass. (Must be 21 and over to participate) Saturday, March 21 – 6:30 pm Larner Winemaker Dinner – $95 per person. (Greenhouse Café 487 Atterdag Road) This new addition to the festival invites a lucky limited number of guests to join winemaker and vineyard owner Michael Larner of Larner Vineyard & Winery in an exclusive four-course, sit-down wine dinner featuring Bacon & Brine’s Chef Pink. The menu was just released and features: roasted green garlic soup with fresh herbs and house-made bacon, spring lamb ragú, slow-smoked pork shoulder, and vanilla bean crème caramel. Sunday, March 22 – 11 am Bubbles & Brunch – $65 per person. (Wildling Museum, 1511-C Mission Drive) It’s appropriate, and civilized, for a Sunday brunch to close this multi-day tasting. Also new this year, this event showcases Danish culinary favorites prepared by Chef Louise Smith of Louise’s Kitchen Table. The menu will be paired with sparkling wines from local Flying Goat Cellars, and winemaker Norm Yost will personally be sharing his “Goat Bubbles” sparkling winemaking process. (Tickets for this event are only available in advance) Festival goers can purchase à la carte tickets or select from three Taste of Solvang packages – A Weekend Passport, VIP Brunch Passport, and “Whole Shebang” Package: each offers a combination of event tickets and swag including a souvenir wine glass, wine charm, Taste of Solvang map, visitors guide, and souvenir tote bag. Visit www. SolvangUSA.com/tickets or call 1-800-468-6765 to purchase tickets in advance.
Eva’s Top Four Faves:
My personal picks, best bets, hot tips, save the dates, and things not to miss! Babi’s Beer Emporium Pie-Eating Contest Calling all food athletes and major league eaters! Appropriately scheduled for March 14 (3.14… get it?) at 1 pm, this inaugural pie-eating contest is simply a sweet way to have fun and celebrate International Pi Day. $10 sign up fee. First place winner gets a one-year Beer Club Membership, second place goes home with a three-month Beer Club Membership, and third place walks with a bottle of craft beer. Babi’s Beer Emporium is located at 388 & 448 Bell Street in Los Alamos. (805) 344-1900 Plein Air Pinot Grab a glass, a paintbrush, and step into the vineyard. Gypsy Studios invites you to join them at the beautiful, stress-free environment of Santa Ynez Valley Vineyards to sip and toast with estate vino while capturing the scenery on canvas. Walk away with a masterpiece to commemorate the occasion. A trained artist will walk new and experienced painters through the entire painting process step-by-step. No previous painting experience necessary. March 15 from 1 to 3 pm. Arrive early and stay late for more wine tasting. $40 per painter – includes your first glass of wine. Visit GypsyStudiosArt.com/events/ for more information. Ostrich Plushy Slippers Found on the outskirts of the giggle worthy world of fuzzy stuffed-animal footwear, the gift shop at Ostrichland USA stocks over stuffed ostrich slippers. Located at 610 East Highway 246 in Buellton, for a small fee ($4) you can feed the emus and ostriches, sweetly gaze upon the baby birds, and oogle at the six ostrich eggs in the incubator set to hatch in about two weeks. Open seven days a week from 9 am to dusk. Visit www.ostrichlandussa.com for more information and available shoe size. Scenic Vintage Railcar Daytrip Step aboard the 1956 Silver Splendor railcar for a round-trip ride from Santa Barbara to San Luis Obispo. Riders will be treated to views of secluded Hollister and Cojo ranches, the massive launch towers of Vandenberg, spring wildflowers, and nature’s surprises along the way. Saturday, March 14, from 10 am to 4:30 pm, $89 per person, and includes beverages and a light snack. Guests are welcome to bring a picnic lunch, and a bottle to share. Seating is limited, and reservations are required and must be made by phone: (805) 680-0397
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BEHIND THE VINE
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Roark Wine Co. wines
by Hana-Lee Sedgwick
Hana-Lee Sedgwick is a digital advertising executive by day and wine consultant and blogger by night. Born and raised in Santa Barbara, she fell in love with the world of wine while living in San Francisco after college. Hana-Lee loves to help people learn about and appreciate wine, putting her Sommelier certification to good use. When not trying new wines or traveling, she can be found practicing yoga, cooking, entertaining, and enjoying time with friends and family. For more information and wine tips, visit her blog, Wander & Wine, at wanderandwine.com.
Under the Radar: Roark Wine Co.
Ryan Roark in his Buellton facility
R
ecently, I was introduced to Roark Wine Company. At Roark, there’s no fancy tasting room or huge production. In fact, there’s no real tasting room at all. If you go to visit Roark to taste the wines, what you get is an inside look into the world of this oneman operation, run by Ryan Roark. The facility, which is located in Buellton’s Industrial area, is a relatively small space with barrels stacked up to the ceiling, bottles that have yet to be labeled, and lots of cool artwork adorning the walls (some of which was created by Ryan’s wife). It’s just a real,
honest glimpse into the world of this hardworking individual. Ryan grew up in Texas and attended college at Texas A&M. Although never having any direct exposure to wine country while in Texas, his uncle was a geologist and often worked in vineyards, introducing Ryan to the world of wine. It was while studying abroad in France that he started to learn about wine in depth, which led to a viticulture internship at a small family winery in the Loire Valley. During his internship, he learned every aspect of the wine business, from farming and winemaking
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to sales and marketing. Soon, a new passion had been formed! After internships in Napa and New Zealand, Ryan moved to Santa Barbara and fell in love with the area while working at a vineyard management company before assisting other winemakers such as Andrew Murray. In 2009, he started making his own wine on the side, purchasing grapes from some of the vineyards he worked with in years prior. Ryan’s approach to winemaking is minimalistic, yet incredibly hands-on. You will just as easily find him out in the vineyards getting his hands dirty as you would in his facility making wine, sampling, and testing until everything is just right. While always trying to minimize costs to keep his wines affordable, Ryan also takes a natural approach to winemaking, employing native yeasts and forgoing the use of harsh chemicals whenever possible. The resulting wines have a certain simplicity yet are unique. Producing about 1,500 cases annually, most of the wines are in the $18-$30 range and are meant to be consumed young. You’re not going to find robust, overly
oaked wines in his collection. They’re a little different, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. All of the wines I tasted were sampled directly from the barrel and yet to be bottled but showing great character and texture. The 2014 Sauvignon Blanc, made with a blend of neutral oak and stainless steel, is a nice, light wine with subtle citrus and minerality. His 2013 Chenin Blanc, the varietal he’s most known for, is rich and round with herbaceous aromas and slight oak nuances. He also makes a Cabernet Franc with a combination of whole cluster and destemmed grapes. It’s earthy and pungent, with spicy jalapeno and briary raspberry characteristics. I think the best way to understand what Roark Wine Co. is all about is to make an appointment to visit the facility and meet Ryan Roark in person. In my opinion, there’s no better way to taste wines than with the person who made them! Plus, it’s always fun to support the smaller guys, right? Cheers.
Roark Wine Company 84 Industrial Way - unit C, Buellton (805) 736-8000
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W W W. S A N TA B A R B A R A S E N T I N E L .CO M
THEDRIVER’SSEAT
Lampkin and Sanchez explore the RC F’s mouse-like touch pad
by Randy Lioz Randy is an automotive enthusiast with more than a decade of experience in the in-
dustry. Originally hailing from New York, he came to Santa Barbara by way of Detroit to work for an automotive forecasting company. You can regularly find him at Cars and Coffee with his Porsche 911 or Speedster replica.
Special Delivery: Car Technology Technology specialist Michael Lampkin and Customer Relations specialist Karissa Sanchez of DCH Lexus, with the sporty 2015 RC F
O
n a recent road trip, I found myself with idle hands as my girlfriend, Liz, drove us down to L.A. So I began to play around with the iDrive system in her BMW to see if there was anything interesting hidden within its menus. Inevitably, I came to the BMW Apps option and eagerly dove in. The suite offered connections with services like Facebook and Twitter, as well as news and weather feeds, among other things. After wrestling with the controller for quite a while, I eventually figured out how to activate all these features. Still, the functionality was sub-par, and we ultimately concluded that it was likely the only person using the BMW Apps suite was the engineer who designed it. There were a few other features on her car that Liz wasn’t familiar with, so I gave her a brief tutorial based on my experience evaluating vehicles, including BMWs, throughout my career. And of course, the thought came to us: shouldn’t the dealer have done this? Yes, yes somebody there should have, as part of the delivery process. Delivery is what dealers call the process when a buyer comes to complete the purchase and pick up their vehicle. And getting it right has become all the more important in these days of proliferating automotive technology. Just about every luxury car now has an infotainment screen, which centralizes all of the functions of the vehicle, such as music, navigation, climate control, vehicle customization, and things such as web browsing and smartphone app extensions. These systems are now
becoming more common among mainstream cars as well, and this fact can actually have a surprisingly negative impact on satisfaction with these cars. Consumer Reports has noted strongly that certain brands were seeing lots of unhappy customers due to confusion over infotainment systems. Just as Liz’s BMW dealer failed to adequately school her on the car’s systems – the dealer name has been omitted to protect the lazy – I’ve heard from many other people who have had similar experiences. Isn’t there any dealer out there who takes the time to do a delivery right? I decided to find out. So I took to the web, and using Yelp I sifted through reviews of just about every dealership in Santa Barbara, looking for one thing: the mention of a thorough delivery process. And I found it, once. The only dealer I saw who got props for walking a customer through the many features of a car was DCH Lexus, and the reviewer, Steve F., mentions Dana Ochoa by name, thanking her for a great sales experience. Now, I certainly don’t mean to suggest that this type of experience doesn’t happen regularly in Santa Barbara, since this was a cursory examination of one source. I’ve definitely had great interactions with local dealers, and I know they provide many great customer experiences. But I would have expected such an important aspect of the delivery process to be more memorable. So I decided to talk to Ochoa about her approach, as well as that of the dealership she represented. While she no longer works at DCH, she sat down
with me to talk about her experiences there and the legacy she left, as well as her general philosophy of customer service. Ochoa started her career at a Toyota dealer in L.A. in the 1980s, and has had experience at several dealerships. In her view, many of them have historically had an attitude about the delivery characterized by “The 3 Cs”: “See the keys, see the car, see ya later,” she said. “Very often, all you’d do is show them where the headlights and wipers were,” she added. “Frankly most people were so excited, they just wanted to go and play with their car.” As technology became a bigger part of the user experience with cars, dealerships took a bit of a “trial and error” approach, said Ochoa. When customers would come back and ask about a feature, the dealers would start to educate them more. In recent years, though, some car manufacturers began to push dealers to start educating customers further, realizing the damage their confusion could do to their brands. Lexus has been one of the most aggressive in this regard. During her time at DCH, Lexus approached Ochoa to set up a Lexus Delivery Specialist function. “We were a brand-new store. At the same time that we were launching, Lexus was launching their Delivery Specialist.” While most Lexus stores designated a single Delivery Specialist, DCH invested the money to certify each of their sales people as such. Ochoa created the LDS program for the store, which is still used as the template for deliveries there. Ochoa has since moved on from DCH, but I got a chance to talk to her successor, Karissa Sanchez, who is in charge of Customer Relations. She talked about the current process, which is driven largely by the use of a custom iPad app from Lexus. The app cleverly starts with a customer-specified delivery duration and fits the features into the time allotted. Interestingly, when Sanchez showed me the list of recent deliveries,
every single one had been roughly a half hour. It’s not surprising, given customers’ excitement to get on the road, and it clarifies the challenges that dealers must face in educating their buyers. There’s a fine line between a thorough run-through and information overload. Michael Lampkin, the dealership’s technology specialist, echoed this sentiment. “After a while, the fatigue sets in and their eyes glass over, and I don’t even know if they’re retaining it.” He suggests to many customers that they carry a pad with them in the car to write down anything further they’d like to learn. One challenge for the delivery process can even be outside technology, such as when setting up connections to third-party apps. Lexus’s Enform infotainment system lets them link with these apps, but a lot of customers do this at home because they can’t remember their passwords, said Sanchez. This issue sounded all too familiar, and my suggestion that they have customers arrive with a list of their passwords was received positively. The Safety Connect system is also set up at this time, so if the car is in an accident Lexus can dispatch emergency services to its location. While many infotainment systems have this sort of functionality, I suspect that in the absence of thorough delivery processes, many drivers leave the dealer without ever knowing about it. Regardless of where you buy your next car, odds are there’ll be a learning curve, and you’ll need to play around with it for a while to get the full picture of all the technology packed into your new “rolling computer.” But the good news is, dealers and manufacturers are getting much better at educating their buyer base about all these vehicles have to offer, so there’s hope for even the staunchest technophobes.
If you have a story about a special car or piece of car culture in the local area, email Randy at rlioz11@gmail.com.
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IHEARTSB
by Elizabeth Rose
I Heart SB is a social experiment in dating and relationships through stories shared with and experienced by a thirty-something living in the Greater Santa Barbara area. All stories herein are based on actual events. Some names, places, and timelines have been altered to preserve anonymity and, most of all, for your reading enjoyment. Submit stories (maximum 700 words) to letters@santabarbarasentinel.com.
United Boys & Girls Clubs of Santa Barbara County Invites You To
A Creek Side Cure for What Ails You
M
y heart was broken, and the only cure was Country Night at the Creek Side Inn. It was a warm, Wednesday night and my romance had come to a bittersweet end. We had a good run but I was sad, very sad, and there was only one solution: my good friend Bettina, worn-in cowboy boots, and two-steppin’. My friend and I had been frequenting Country Night for months and it had become our mid-week recharge to catch-up and learn a new dance move or two. It’s good for the soul. And any broken heart. “This is the worst!” I confess as I nurse a Stella Artois. “I feel ya” Bettina says, “You had a beautiful experience and now it’s over. It’s ok to be upset.” We’re next door, bellied up to the Bourbon Room bar. Our schedule of events for these evenings is one beer at the Bourbon Room then over to the Creek Side for boot-scoot bliss. This was, of course, one of those nights. She pauses, raises her beer, and murmurs in a playful voice, “But you never know...”. I shake my head, “Uh uh, No way! I’ve got to just let him go and move forward,” I say, trying to convince. “Now, how the hell do I do that?” An exhausted laugh forces its way out. At this point, any feeling not resembling a sinking hole in my chest is more than welcome. Here’s my love story in a nutshell: I had just moved into a new place and was enjoying the freedom of a single woman. That’s when it happened - my dear friends/mentors introduced me to their son and so began the journey into the unknown. I kept it together, the first few times we hung out anyway, and wouldn’t allow myself to “go there”. In truth, it was a night at the Creek Side that changed everything. “Would you like to dance?”, he asks eagerly. “Sure!,” I say, not thinking anything of it. I don’t know if it was the glow of the string lights or the Alan Jackson song, but once we hit the dance floor something clicked. I let my guard down and a beautiful, intense, and amazing time ensued. It was real. And then, it was over. It ended with the young man boarding a plane to China for two years and, after a little effort of trying a long-distance relationship (I know, I know), the truth of the situation came to a head and we called it quits. At the moment of impact (read: the actual moment we ended it), a variety of emotions emerged.
The first was inevitable sadness, hurt, and rejection – all at once and rolled into a giant gut punch. Soon to follow was the feeling of familiarity – I was back to the single girl I once was and it was strangely comforting. Next, was a feeling I least expected: relief. Relief from the struggle of trying to hold on to something that wasn’t working. A struggle I chose to ignore. All of the emotions made me feel pain, confusion, and alive. It hurt so good. This may seem odd, but up until this point, I had never truly had my heart broken. Yes, I’d been sad when past relationships ended, but this was different. This one made a mark. To be honest, I was thankful to have this experience. It makes me feel more connected with humanity – now I get it. Fast forward to present day. Bettina and I are trading stories and after many laughs, she interrupts with excitement. “All right, all right! It’s time!” We “Cheers” our last sip, tip the bartender, and head next door. As we turn the corner, the neon lights of the Creek Side make my tender heart skip a beat. An ID check and a five dollar cover, we’re in. The dance floor is packed with two-steppers resembling a merrygo-round of fun and all the bittersweet memories welcome me with open arms, acting as a kind of “shock therapy” to get me back to reality. With country music blaring from the DJ booth, and cowboys and cowgirls at every turn, we could tell this was going to be a good night. We do a quick lap, say “Hi” to familiar faces, and head to the bar. Bettina orders the drinks, “Two PBR tall-boys, please!” Another “Cheers” and we’re off. A couple “West Coast Swings”, a “Cowboy Cha Cha”, and many classic two-steps later, I’m feeling like myself again – it’s funny what a few of twirls can do for a gal. The night rages on, but it’s time for these tired cowgirls to go. We bid farewell to our favorite dance partners and hop in the awaiting Uber taxi to take us home. As I gaze out the window, a faint smile takes residence on my face. Everything was going to be okay. I just needed a night at the Creek Side Inn to remind me.
Creek Side Inn 4444 Hollister Avenue, Santa Barbara (805) 964-5118
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